If Pot Prevented Cancer You Would Have Read About It, Right?

Two influential websites — The Hill.com’s Congress blog and the Huffington Post — have provided me with a platform to report on the contrasting impact of alcohol and cannabis on cancer.

If Pot Prevented Cancer You Would Have Read About It, Right?
via TheHill.com

Two just published studies assessing adults’ risk of cancer have reported wildly divergent, and fairly extraordinary, outcomes. One study you may have read about. The other has been ignored entirely by the mainstream media.

… First, the study you may have heard of. Writing August 3 in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, investigators at McGill University in Montreal reported that moderate alcohol consumption–defined as six drinks or less per week–by adults is positively associated with an elevated risk of various cancers including stomach cancer, rectal cancer, and bladder cancer.

And now for the study you haven’t heard of. Writing in the August issue of the journal Cancer Prevention Research, investigators from Rhode Island’s Brown University along with researchers at Boston University, Louisiana State University, and the University of Minnesota reported that that lifetime marijuana use is associated with a “significantly reduced risk” of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.

As I’ve written previously, both on this blog and elsewhere, for 35 years the federal government has been well aware –- yet publicly denied –- that cannabis possesses potent anti-cancer and anti-tumor properties. Even under the Obama administration, which promised to “base [their] public policies on the soundest of science,” the myth that pot promotes cancer persists. In fact, the White House’s website, whitehousedrugpolicy.gov, presently warns, “Marijuana has the potential to promote cancer of the lungs and other parts of the respiratory tract.”

Of course, this myth persists in large part because the mainstream media rarely if ever pays attention to studies that could be seen as in any way undermining criminal prohibition. (In some cases, the MSM even goes so far as to erroneously report about those that do.) So it’s hardly surprising that in the three week span since the Brown University study was published, not one mainstream media outlet has reported its findings. (Full disclosure: over the past days I have personally communicated with several prominent newspapers’ writers about this study — in each case providing them with the full text of the investigators’ findings — but have yet to received any positive feedback beyond the obligatory “We’ll look into it.”)

Will the promotion of these findings in prominent alt-media outlets like The Hill and Huff Po reverse the MSM’s complacency? Perhaps — and your feedback to both sites can only help. So chime in (**Note: comments on both sites are moderated), and tell the MSM that it’s time for us to stop having to do their job!

A Tale of Two Studies

For 35 years scientists have known that naturally occurring compounds in the cannabis plant possess potent and selective anti-cancer properties, a fact that I have documented extensively in previous writings here, here, and here.

Yet for more than three decades the scientific study of these anti-cancer effects has remained almost exclusively limited to preclinical in vitro (in a petri dish) and in vivo (in lab animals) analysis, rather than clinical (human) study. Why? A just published review in the Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology provides an answer.

Cannabinoid receptor ligands as potential anticancer agents – high hopes for new therapies?
abstract excerpt via PubMed

In recent years, CB receptor ligands, including Delta(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol, have been proposed as potential anticancer agents. This review critically discusses the pharmacology of CB receptor activation as a novel therapeutic anticancer strategy in terms of ligand selectivity, tissue specificity and potency. Intriguingly, antitumour effects mediated by cannabinoids are not confined to inhibition of cancer cell proliferation; cannabinoids also reduce angiogenesis, cell migration and metastasis, inhibit carcinogenesis and attenuate inflammatory processes.

Sounds promising, huh? Well it is — that is, until you get to this:

The development of CB(2)-selective anticancer agents could be advantageous in light of the unwanted central effects exerted by CB(1) receptor ligands.

And just what are these terrible “unwanted effects” — effects so “problematic” that we must continue to forbid scientists from clinically studying the drug’s effects in cancer patients? I’ll let the authors explain.

“In terms of a potential therapeutic application the unwanted psychotropic effects mediated via CB1 could be a problem.”

You read that right. The ‘problem’ with cannabinoids anti-cancer abilities is that patients might temporarily feel better after they take them!

Now contrast mainstream science’s feigned concern with the so-called ‘unwanted effects’ of the natural cannabis ‘high’ with the actual side-effects of the pharmaceutical cannabinoid antagonist drug rimonabant (aka Acomplia), which was recently withdrawn from the European market because of the the drug’s link to depression and suicide.

The psychiatric side-effects of rimonabant

Experimental evidence has suggested that drugs that enhance cannabinoid type-1 (CB1) receptor activity may induce anxiolytic and antidepressant effects, whilst the opposite has been reported with antagonists. Thus, the objective of the present review is to discuss the potential psychiatric side-effects of CB1 receptor antagonists, such as rimonabant, which has been recently marketed in several countries for the treatment of smoking cessation, obesity and associated metabolic disorders.

… Patients taking CB1 receptor antagonists should be carefully investigated for psychiatric side-effects. These drugs should not be prescribed for those already suffering from mental disorders. Nevertheless, the development of new compounds targeting the endocannabinoid system for the treatment of several conditions would be necessary and opportune.

Let’s review shall we? Natural plant selectively kills cancer, but it may also get you high = “problematic.” Synthetic pharmaceutical drug short circuits the body’s natural endocannabinoid system and will likely make you depressed and suicidal = “opportune.”

Any questions?