There have been claims that cannabis increases the incidence of head and neck cancers, but large epidemiological studies have not demonstrated this. In fact, cannabis helps kill brain and breast tumor cells.

Sidney, S., J. E. Beck, I. S. Tekawa, C. P. Quesenberry, and G. D. Friedman. 1997. Marijuana use and mortality. Am J Public Health 87 (4):585-90.

The human toxicity of marijuana: a critique of a review by Nahas and Latour.

Abstract

A review entitled "The human toxicity of marijuana" was published in 1992 in the Medical Journal of Australia. The authors claimed that the adverse effects of cannabis use have been trivialised and that the effects are much more serious than earlier reported. We have made a careful study of this review and examined the claims made. We compared the claims of the authors with the information contained in the documents they cited and found that at least 28 of the 35 citations in this article were cited inaccurately.

Five of these publications were misquoted,or the findings of the study were not fully reported. Twenty-three citations contained other errors, leaving only six to eight (two citations could not be traced because of their obscurity) accurate citations among the 35. All of these inaccuracies operated in the direction of finding an adverse effect of marijuana.

Introduction

It is not a pleasant task to make an open criticism of a paper by colleagues, but we feel compelled to do so in the case of a paper published in the Medical Journal of Australia in 1992.. . etc "

by Macdonald J. Christie & Greogory B. Chesher, Department of Pharmacology,University of Sydney,New South Wales,Australia
See: http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/nahas1.htm

On September 6, 1988, the Drug Enforcement Administration's Chief Administrative Law Judge, Francis L. Young, ruled: "Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known....[T]he provisions of the [Controlled Substances] Act permit and require the transfer of marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule II. It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for the DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance."

Source: US Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Agency, In the Matter of Marijuana Rescheduling Petition , [Docket #86-22] (September 6, 1988), p. 57.

The World Health Organization released a study in March 1998 that states: "there are good reasons for saying that [the risks from cannabis] would be unlikely to seriously [compare to] the public health risks of alcohol and tobacco even if as many people used cannabis as now drink alcohol or smoke tobacco."

Source: Hall, W., Room, R. & Bondy, S., WHO Project on Health Implications of Cannabis Use: A Comparative Appraisal of the Health and Psychological Consequences of Alcohol, Cannabis, Nicotine and Opiate Use , August 28, 1995, (contained in original version, but deleted from official version) (Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization, March 1998).

The authors of a 1998 World Health Organization report comparing marijuana, alcohol, nicotine and opiates quote the Institute of Medicine's 1982 report stating that there is no evidence that smoking marijuana "exerts a permanently deleterious effect on the normal cardiovascular system."

Source: Hall, W., Room, R. & Bondy, S., WHO Project on Health Implications of Cannabis Use: A Comparative Appraisal of the Health and Psychological Consequences of Alcohol, Cannabis, Nicotine and Opiate Use , August 28, 1995 (Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization, March 1998).

See: http://drugwarfacts.org/medicalm.htm

Referring to two-thirds of Canadians who support softening the laws for all cannabis and the many politicians who, along with an overwhelmiing 92% of our citizens, favour change for medical purposes as the "pro-dope movement" and stating that "tolerance" and "popular support" are "dangerous", exposes how out of touch the American agenda is with our culture.