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Toke Pure
Cannabis and tobacco
Download
UKCIA Tokepure flier
What's
the problem?
So
why do people mix the herb with this "evil weed"?
Why
haven't things changed?
So
what can cannabis users do for themselves? - DIY harm reduction
What
could the government do?
Anti
cannabis campaigners are usually only too eager to warn about
the health risks of using cannabis, more often than not making
exaggerated claims which later prove to be simply wrong, but
they keep very quiet about one very real danger.
While
the government with its Talk to Frank anti drugs advertising
campaign warns people about the dangers of mixing drugs they
keep strangely quiet about the most common drug cocktail the
vast majority of cannabis users take.
We're
talking about tobacco of course.
To
be fair, it's not only the government that doesn't want to talk
about the way cannabis is usually smoked with tobacco, most
stoners don't want to either. In the UK, most cannabis users
roll joints - cannabis mixed with tobacco.
The
dangers of tobacco are well known, its addictive and carcinogenic
- which means it causes cancer.
Perhaps
it's because cannabis is illegal and tobacco is not that this
situation has been allowed to continue for so long, in fact,
a lot of people don't really think of tobacco as a drug even
now, but it is one and in fact it's one of the most dangerous
drugs there is, up there with heroin and crack cocaine in terms
of the harm it can do.
So the aim of this section of UKCIA is to spread some very important
information and to encourage anyone who wants to use cannabis
to toke pure and to keep well away from tobacco. The age of
the tobacco joint is over, help make it happen.
What's
the problem?
In
some respects, tobacco is not unlike cannabis. Both are plants
and hence totally natural herbs and both are smoked. When the
plant material is burned chemicals which affect the brain -
which we call drugs - boil off and get sucked into the lungs
where they enter the bloodstream and make their way to your
brain. Along with the drugs of course comes lots of other smoke
which you don't really want. Anyway, this is where the similarity
ends. Both plants contain very different drugs which do very
different things.
As
everyone knows tobacco is a killer, in fact Tobacco is responsible
for 140,000 deaths each year in the UK alone and 5.4 million
deaths worldwide according the World Health Organisation.
Our
big claim for cannabis is that it has never directly killed
anyone.
Prohibition
campaigners have tried to claim that smoking pure cannabis is
something like four times more dangerous than tobacco, but as
with so many of these claims they don't stand up to proper study.
For
example a big study in the US (read
it here) found "that the association of these cancers
with marijuana, even long-term or heavy use, is not strong and
may be below practically detectable limits" and another
study (read
it here) found that "Smoking only marijuana was not
associated with an increased risk of respiratory symptoms or
COPD." - COPD is "chronic obstructive lung disease"
- it's not nice and is strongly connected with tobacco smoking.
So
the truth seems to be that cannabis smoked alone is far safer
than tobacco in terms of what it does to your lungs and that
smoking the two together may be the worst of both worlds. This
is serious stuff.
Now
lets be honest here, we are not saying smoking cannabis is harmless,
breathing in any smoke is bad for you and the less you breath
in the better, but mixing cannabis and tobacco is adding a level
of damage cannabis by itself doesn't seem to do, and it's nasty
damage that kills by a slow painful death.
But
as if that isn't enough, there's more. Tobacco is a more addictive
drug than heroin. Breaking a tobacco habit can be a very agonizing
and difficult experience which many people can never manage
to do.
Both
cannabis and tobacco are psychologically addictive, which means
you associate using them with doing things you enjoy and this
can be hard to break, but as well as that, tobacco is strongly
physically addictive. Physically addictive means your brain
needs a constant feed of the drug just to function normally.
Cannabis might also do that for some people, especially long
term very heavy tokers, but certainly not for the vast majority.
Coming
off tobacco involves real "cold turkey" - just like
heroin withdrawal (although it's different of course) plus the
problems of breaking the psychological addiction.
Some
people think tobacco isn't a drug because it doesn't make you
stoned or anything like that. Cannabis works on the bit of the
brain you're aware of, so when you get stoned you feel intoxicated.
Tobacco works on a part of the brain that controls emotions,
it makes you feel good about having taken it, which is why smoking
tobacco is so enjoyable. It's a real mugs drug.
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