The Volokh Conspiracy

The first surgeon general's report on smoking failed to find a link between cigar and pipe smoking and lung cancer. Subsequent surgeons general solved this awkwardness by never breaking them out separately again.

Drugs are bad, mmmmkay.

I don't even have to read the report to know there's no link between the evil weed and cancer -- it's obvious on the face of it.

A heavy cigarette smoker smokes a couple of packs a day, day in day out for decades on end, then may or may not ultimately get cancer from it.

A heavy pot smoker would probably inhale, at most, 3-4 joints a day or less than 1/10 the amount and it's all natural vs. loaded with additives...

My primary point was not "all natural" but went to the quantity and frequency of ingestion.

You'd not have any increased of cancer from smoking 4 cigarettes a day, from home dried tobacco or the commercial kind. Just as you have no increased chance of contracting cancer from 2nd hand smoke.

Brilliant Fub.

Irensaga I agree that the meth problem is much larger than most people realize. Highest/fastest spike to the pleasure receptors and it's insanely addictive. Nasty business which is a rot to low/middle class. Gotta love the petty crime that goes with it too.

John Jenkins,
"and there is a lot of money being spent on methamphetamine enforcement and interdiction across the country, along with ineffective measures like restricting access to cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine (a precursor)."

My understanding though is that source is unique enough (less than a dozen plants in the world make the key ingredient) that meth could be controlled by restricting the source. Granted limiting people to 3 Sudafed boxes per store is not a successful restriction campaign. Going back further to the source would be. But of course that would mess with drug company’s profit margins on cold medicine. I guess it will be a while before the meth epidemic is a big enough problem that it overrides drug company profits?

SenatorX, pseudoephedrine is in the public domain. You can buy it cheaply in generic brands, so your argument about drug company profits doesn't really give the reason. Then there's the fact that you're interfering with millions of people who want to self-medicate for a cold or sinus problem. An obvious counterargument is that there are other drugs that do that, which is true, and they are generally more expensive, leading to greater drug company profits. I guess you're just screwed on that one.

As to the meth epidimic, (1) it's overplayed and (2) if you ban pseudoephedrine, people will use other precursors. As it is now, here in Oklahoma, meth cooks import pesudoephedrine from other places (notably mexico, where it is easily purchased in large lots). It's simply not possible for the U.S. government to choke off all of the supplies. Even if they did, the demand would simply shift to something else (sort of like how we got to meth in the first place).

The only way to stop it is to dry up demand. The only ways to dry up demand are to imprison the drug users, which is unjust, expensive and ineffective (because drugs are available in prison), to somehow convince them all to stop doing drugs (which seems unlikely), or allow people to use other things in its place (which also seems unlikely).

All of that begs the question, however, because it assumes that we *ought* to do something about it in the first place. While regulating meth cooks on the basis of hazard makes sense, regulating meth use really doesn't because the secondary effects of heavy handed enforcement are worse than the secondary effects of meth use. There's also the fact that enforcement doesn't work.

How do they breathe, then? True, they mostly don't draw the smoke in the way cigarette smokers do, but they surely inhale a lot of tobacco smoke.

My impression, as a former heavy cigarette smoker and former sometime pipe-smoker, was that one doesn't intentionally inhale the smoke with each drag with a pipe or cigar. One surely inhales plenty of second-hand (I suppose "ambient" smoke might be a better term, as it come from the smoker himself in the first place) smoke but that it's nowhere near the amount that cigarette smokers do. The nicotine is delivered primarily through absorbtion into the bloodstream through the mouth. It sure never gave me the buzz/fix that cigarettes did. Anyway, all bad for you and I'm thrilled I finally managed to quit. My point was simply that I wasn't surprised there wasn't a direct link with lung cancer found in these cases.

John,
None of what you say is really true and you certainly don't seem very solution oriented. The most important error is point our your "other precursors" theory. What exactly are those again? The precursors to meth are very difficult to make and there are only some 9 labs in the world that make them. Control of distribution from there and over the counter to consumers would successfully put an end to the meth market. Meth is very different from most drugs in that the "precursors" are not taken from an easy to grow plant. Why do you think again this has not been addressed? I am interested in your theory.

Oh and the hazard of cooking meth? Comes from cooking the PILL COATS off and other binders...Before they had to get it across the counter they didn’t have that hazard.
Go tell a room full of mothers trying to kick meth that their "epidemic" is overplayed. They only have a twenty something percent chance of success. See the drug actually changes parts of the brain permanently. I suppose it's hard to enjoy anything after being a meth addict. That bar gets raised so high nothing else can ever touch it. That’s not something that is overplayed. That is something where all the money spent on the prohibition of marijuana should go instead.

My cigar box has a warning against mouth and throat cancer but not lung cancer. Probably to comply with Prop 65.

I blame todays poor teaching of High School Chemistry,

Back in the 70's, the easily available recipes for cooking up Meth involved much harder syntheses. Today's high school drop outs have to rely on the much easier conversion from pseudo-ephedrine

SenatorX,

PPA &ephedrine are both alternate precursors. Ephedrine *is* easily available from plants. Your "9 labs" theory is incorrect. There are nine "major" labs producing pseudoephedrine. You don't think someone will take up the slack if those sources are cut off (and how would you expect to do that outside the U.S.)? You said yourself how addictive meth is. That creates a market. Someone will find a way to serve it. The idea that the Congress can stop meth manufacture by forcing the nine major labs to report to the DEA how much pseudoephedrine they produce is laughable on its face.

You say I'm not solution oriented. You're still begging the question. If someone wants to abuse meth, why should I stop them? What right or obligation do you or I have to stop someone else from destroying himself? You say that we should stop marijuana enforcement. I agree. But why should we stop with marijuana? Why not legalize all drugs? If your belief is the great harm that meth causes justifies intervention (and it is harmful to those who use it, my statement was intended to convey the idea that the meth "epedimic" is overstated, not the effects on an indivudual user), then shouldn't alcohol be first on the list? If not, why not? Because you approve of one and not the other?

AppSocRes, don't worry. Mexico is getting it's drug revenge. Most of the meth used in the U.S. today isn't even manufactured here because there are large labs in Mexico that can do so more cheaply and easily and then import the drug to the U.S.

Another reason that cigar and pipe smokers don't show the same overall bad health effects is that they tend to be richer and get better health care. Of course this can be controled for but it is a confounding effect.

I think one reason that the government should focus on meth and crack more than pot is because it has more externalities and crime. I know some quite function (if low motivated) people who smoke pot. The only people I know second hand who have a meth problem have totally spiraled to nothing.

The first surgeon general's report on smoking failed to find a link between cigar and pipe smoking and lung cancer.

Most people don't inhale cigar and pipe smoke, right?

There is a causal link between pipe/cigar smoking and cancer of the oral cavity and throat. Also with chewing tobacco. Sigmund Freud died of this disease. Having seen people with this and many other diseases, I can say that if there is one disease I would NOT want to have, this is it.

It's true that there is a link between mouth and throat cancer and pipe and cigar smoking -- IIRC the first SG report discovered a roughly 7x increase for pipe smokers &2x for cigar smokers. However, mouth and throat cancer is extremely rare in the base population, much more rare than lung cancer is; as the 1st SGR documented that 7x increase merely takes the risk from extremely rare to very rare.

Something else that the SG report didn't mention, but that I have noticed among they guys at the pipe shop is that there is a very low rate of tobacco addiction, and even that seems to be mostly among the guys that started on cigarettes and switched to pipes to save money.

Pipe and cigar smokers fail to inhale the primary smoke in much the same way as they fail to inhale soda when they drink through a straw.

You mean they suck it quickly into their stomach?

As of now there is no "BIG MARIJUANA" to sue. If pot gets fully leagalized and is then sold by huge and profitable companys, studies will appear linking it to everything from cancer of the urine to munchie-induced obesity.

Marijuana, on the very face of things, does not belong in Cat1 (no known medical use), though perhaps in another category rather than simply legalizing. The "active" ingredients in the weed are, in fact, the basis of more than one medicine.

But "no medical use" it is. And research in the US is best described as forbidden: higher quality plants than those grown by the government apparently grow in the wild, let be in greenhouses. --- it's ``not NIDA's mission to study the medicinal use of marijuana`` --- see link below...

The UK, and now Canada, have started what amounts to a large-scale testing: while restricted to MS patients, it is available by prescription - and no nonsense about growing the stuff in open fields, using the whole plant (stems, seeds, and all), or other asininity, the idea is to try to know (if with large uncertainties) quality/dosage/effect.

Weed control

I meant to say "People do NOT smoke comparable...."

Doc, that's powerful evidence about pot smoking. Thanks for contributing.

However, your experiences do not convince me that pot should be outlawed. Alcohol is involved in many car accidents, and certainly there are children neglected and abused by alcoholics. Then shouldn't they both be treated the same? Either all pot and alcohol should be prohibited, or both should be allowed, but controlled. What is the justification for treating one different from the other when the results of abuse are the same?