Does methodology matter to no one.
 

Saw this all over the net today and finally clicked on it.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012...1&f=1128&sc=tw

WTF - I don't know a thing about pot use, ie how strong your reaction is or how often the average person consumes. But this comparison to smoking is REDICKULUS. Doctors measure cigarette smoking density in PACK years, ie, '20 cigarette' years. They're talking about heavy use of marijuana being measured in joint years, and moderate use as a joint per week.

You're talking, for a 2PPD smoker, a 40x to 280x consumption density. I'd submit that people who consume 280 ounces of soda, heck water, per day would have more health problems than those who consumed 1 ounce of Everclear per day.

What's your point? Every sane person knows that inhaling any kind of smoke is a bad thing. Marijuana users just look for a reason to justify using, so they say it's better than smoking. Well, maybe it is, but inhaling smoke is not good, period.

Do you think that's remotely the point the authors of this at NPR and JAMA are trying to make.

I don't know...or care. I just saw this as an outlet to air my annoyance with the whole thing.

I'm missing where they stated what the "pack years" were for the smokers they compared to? BL, if they did in fact simply go by pack years vrs joint years (which they did define), then you are correct, as there are 20 cigs in a pack

I know this from working Coal Worker's Pneumoconiosis [Black Lung] cases. Deposed dozens of doctors in 3 states who all reliably phrase their intake history in terms of how many 'pack years' workers reported smoking. ie, 3 PPD for 20 years = 60 PYs, 1 PPD for 30 years = 30 PYs.

But even then, common sense tells you that they are making this comparison knowing that cigarette smokes normally consume in terms of PPD, and joint smokers consume in terms of joints per week or month.

5,000 people for 20 years. I wonder if anyone ever tried to use this excuse?

"It's ok officer, that bag of weed is for a medical research study."

Making the study a complete waste of time and pointless. And I'll bet you'll find it's tax payer funded.

Is it just me or does JAMA sound like a great name for a strain of killer weed?

That or Michael Jackson exclaiming flambouyantly as he plunges his junk into a baby boy booty hole.

I guess I don't see the issue. If someone were to smoke 20 joints in a day, I don't think they'd be functional enough to light up a 21st. One per day sounds like pretty heavy use to me.

After clicking on the link to see the story's headline (A joint may be easier on the lungs than a cigarette), I'd agree that THAT part is taking it too far, though that headline wasn't mentioned in the OP.

I think you missed my point. I know what pack years refer to and figured you did as well. It seems that there wasn't a number of pack years they compared to the moderate and heavy pot smokers "joint years" is what I was getting at. For instance, if a person smoked for 10 pack years and had less function than a person that smoked what they are calling 10 joint years, then yes, that is about 20 times more cigs than joints. The other thing is that most people dont smoke but a partial joint at a time. I agree that the metholdology is full of shit however.

I wonder if they will ever do a study on bowl years.

Until then... meh

One word... Vaporizer!

Says who?

I had this EXACT same line of thought this morning. Saw a story with a startling headline, clicked it, read it, saw the glaring obvious problem.

They are basically comparing several packs to one joint. WTF, really?

Aside from the obvious reason why its not comparable, its also not reasonable to assume that several-joint MJ smokers wont exist if MJ is legal. They don't exist now because its not legal and its not cheap.

This study is worthless. I understand the difficulty of finding incredibly-heavy MJ-users, but if they cant find those, then they should only compare what they've got to very light cigarette smokers who only light up a few times a month.

Is there an exponential factor for those exercising both PYs & JYs concurrently?

Not that I need to know or anything...

The difficulty is finding a decent comparison. A pot user doesn’t light up and smoke an entire joint every hour or so like a smoker does. They may smoke once or twice a day (and that’s a pretty serious user, assuming they have a job).

And who are these idiots who think that a joint is the universal form of smoking pot? Of all the regular smokers I know, I’d guess less than 1% use joints as their main form of consumption, and those are generally the people who smoke the least overall, since a joint is a social thing.

In that case, they can easily find a good comparison. They need to cull out all the heavy tobacco smokers, since people smoking several packs a day are in another world by themselves.

Take 1,000 typical pot users, compare them with 1,000 very light few times a month cigarette smokers, and see what you got. I do think cigarettes are more harmful, but the difference wont be much under that condition.

Waiting to see the study comparing the health impacts of pot brownies to Oreo consumption.

People who eat a pot brownie a week are more healthy than people who eat 40 Oreos per day. You're welcome.

Blunts FTW.
Posted via Mobile Device

I wondered that too
Posted via Mobile Device

Yup

Got one. Dont like it much though. Not the same to me
Posted via Mobile Device

Apt and succinct. I approve.

Took me about a week to get used to it. The reason it's not the same is because of exactly that...it's not the same.

The process, the steps involved, the smell, the taste (which is actually a lot nicer with the vape), the cached feeling in your lungs, etc. That all goes away with the vaporizer so all you get is the end result.

That end result does still work just fine, and you feel a lot of better in general, too, because you're not sucking in all that nasty, resinated shit that gets left behind. Not to mention you save on your shit because it's a lot more efficient. No flame. No burning up your stuff. No carcinogens. You gotta get past the habit of everything else involved and be able to realize it.

Point is I think you should try it again.

Lol. I use it quite a bit still.

Just isn't the same
Posted via Mobile Device

That's actually not true at all. The dose makes the poison. Anyone who has studied toxicology knows this.

Check this out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_limit_value

Of course, inhaling smoke DIRECTLY usually does cause one to pass that threshold. I don't know the exact figures for marijuana .. I do know that it is far worse on carcinogens than cigarettes are.