Good news for pot smokers

<body leftmargin="0" bgcolor="#000060" text="#FFFFFF" link="#FFFF00" vlink="#FF9900"> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="95%" height="1"> <tr> <center> <td valign="top" width="33%" height="33"> <b> <p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="5">Good news for pot smokers</font></p> </b> <p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="1">July 2, 2005<br> Courtesy University of Michigan Health System<br> and World Science staff<br> </font> <b><font size="2" face="Arial"> <br> An oft-mentioned danger of marijuana smoking—so widely believed that the smokers themselves admit it all the time—is that it kills your brain cells.<br> <br> But a new study has found that one of marijuana’s active ingredients actually helps produce new brain cells, and this is correlated with anxiety-reducing effects.<br> <br> It’s part of a double whammy of good news for pot lovers, because another new study has found that marijuana smoke is less carcinogenic than cigarette smoke.<br> <br> None of this establishes that pot smoking is safe. Several studies have found it produces notable memory impairments, although there is debate over whether these are temporary or not.<br> <br> Nonetheless, the findings contain “good news for the medical marijuana movement,” chirped a press release from the Journal of Clinical Investigation, which published the findings regarding the new brain cells.<br> <br> “Most drugs of abuse decrease the generation of new neurons in the brain,” or brain cells, the press release continued. But the new study found that rats given heavy doses an artificial version of a potent, active ingredient of marijuana grew new brain cells <br> <br> In the journal’s November issue, Xia Zhang and colleagues from University of Saskatchewan found that creation of new brain cells was aided by a “potent and synthetic cannabinoid,” or man-made version of a compound extracted from marijuana. <br> <br> The rats also exhibited less anxiety- and depression- like behavior after a month of the treatment, the study found. The findings, by Xia Zhang and colleagues from University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, are to appear in the journal’s November issue.<br> <br> The second, separate study found that marijuana smoke is not as carcinogenic as tobacco smoke.<br> <br> Robert J. Melamede of the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs found that “although cannabis smoke and tobacco smoke are chemically very similar, evidence suggests that their effects are very different and that cannabis smoke is less carcinogenic than tobacco smoke,” said a statement from BioMed Central, publishers of the Harm Reduction Journal. The findings appeared Monday in the journal.<br> <br> “The pharmacological effects of tobacco and cannabis smoke differ in many ways, mainly because tobacco smoke contains nicotine while cannabis smoke contains tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). The cancer-promoting effects of smoke are increased by nicotine, while they are reduced by THC.”<br> <br> “Tobacco and cannabis smoke contain the same carcinogenic compounds – and depending on which part of the plant is smoked, cannabis smoke can contain more of them – but, whereas nicotine activates these carcinogenic compounds, THC has been shown to inhibit them in mice cells. THC is very likely to have protective effects against the carcinogens present in smoke in humans too, but cannabis smoke remains nonetheless carcinogenic.”<br> <br> * * *</font> </p> </b> <p><b><font face="Arial" size="2" color="#FFFFFF">Send us a <a href="mailto:editor@world-science.net">comment</a> on this story, or <a href="mailto:?Body=http://www.world-science.net/othernews/051018_potfrm.htm">send it to a friend</a></font></b> </p> <p>  </center> </td> </tr> </table> </body>