New Studies Destroy the Last Objection to Medical Marijuana

clipped from www.alternet.org New research on "vaporization" has demonstrated that all those fears about the ill effects of smoking marijuana are 100 percent obsolete. Anyone who advocates for medical marijuana sooner or later runs into arguments about smoking: "No real medicine is smoked." "Smoking is bad for the lungs; why would any doctor recommend something so harmful?" It's a line of reasoning that medical marijuana opponents have used to great effect in Congress, state legislatures, and elsewhere. Indeed, the FDA's controversial 2006 statement opposing medical marijuana was couched in repeated references to "smoked marijuana." The smoking argument was the closest thing to a scientifically meaningful objection to medical marijuana. While marijuana smoke, unlike tobacco, has never been shown to cause lung cancer, heavy marijuana smoking has been associated with assorted respiratory symptoms and a potentially increased risk of bronchitis.