The Straight Toke - THE Marijuana Blog

Dear Julius,
I've heard that if you smoke marijuana, you're putting yourself at a greater risk for lung cancer than if you smoke tobacco. Is that true? If so, how harmful is it?

No, it's not true. I say that tenatively, since there is a catch, which I'll explain in a second.

It's not true, in that if you smoke marijuana regularly, and even if you are a heavy user, you are at no increased risk for lung cancer. The University of California at Los Angeles recently concluded a rather large (1,200 people) study on marijuana's link to lung cancer. They found that marijuana use has no corellation to lung cancer.

Last week, Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico and a 2008 presidential candidate, announced his support of medical marijuana in New Mexico. There are already 11 states in the United States that allow the medicinal use of cannabis -- and Richardson hopes to add a 12th.

Of course just because a state allows medical cannabis doesn't mean that all marijuana is legal. It's quite likely that recreational marijuana users will find their pastime just as arrest-causing as before -- and that probably won't change for some time. Instead, allowing medicinal cannabis is but the first step towards legaliztion. The more legitimate medical uses an herb has, the harder it becomes to claim that herb causes "insanity, criminality, and death" (as Harry J. Anslinger once claimed.)

A blog about marijuana? Are you serious?

Yes. Yes we are. We think marijuana is a valuable plant, and we hope that by making available all sorts of information about its use, we will encourage people to investigate it for themselves. (And hopefully, push for its legalization in those jurisdictions where it is still illegal.)

So what exactly are we going to have here?

• Experiences - this includes all sorts of documentation of people's use of marijuana. What they saw, what they said, what they drew, what they wrote, how they acted, how long it lasted, what they smoked... we will try to provide as complete a report about each use of marijuana as possible. We anonymize information (since some governments do not look favorably upon our favorite herb.)