Everywhere you look these days there are anti-smoking campaigns. Gone are the days of cigarette ads like Lucky Strike promising to keep you slim or Camel claiming “more doctors smoke Camels”, it would be astounding to even see a cigarette commercial promoting the use of tobacco. Today we have pictures of black lungs, amputees, and people who have had to have their larynx removed and must use a prosthetic to speak. We know from many studies, such as one done in the UK, that tobacco products and marijuana cigarettes contain benzyprene, which is in the tar produced by smoke.
Benzyprene causes cancer by altering a gene known as p53. The p53 gene suppresses tumors that would naturally grow in the human body. 75% of lung cancers have been linked to people with a faulty p53 gene. Now, since there are so many anti-smoking campaigns about how tobacco adversely effects your health why do all the anti-marijuana campaigns focus on the mental and psychoactive aspects of the drug and not the health aspect? Could marijuana be safer to smoke than tobacco? There have been reports that marijuana cures cancer, so shouldn’t it be safe to smoke?
