New Ammunition in the Campaign to Legalize Marijuana

Medicinal marijuana is legal in eleven states now; in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. The purpose for the cannabinoid drugs in patients include appetite stimulation, control of vomiting and nausea, and pain relief.

However, in a recently published study, marijuana might have other surprising benefits to health; fighting lung cancer.

Sure, doctors want to be clear that smoking marijuana is not good for the lungs, but, it has now been shown that the active ingredient in marijuana, delta-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) cuts tumor growth in half in common lung cancer while obstructing the cancer's ability to spread.

Harvard University researchers conducted the study using laboratory and mouse studies.

The way that THC fights lung cancer, according to the researchers, is that it curbs epidermal growth factor (EGF), a molecule that stimulates the growth and spread of particularly aggressive non-small cell lung cancers.

Dr. Len Horovitz, a pulmonary specialist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, did not participate in the study but did comment; he says that the compound "seems to have a suppressive effect on certain lines of cancer cells...it seems to go to (EGF) receptor sites on cells and inhibit growth."

Dr. Norman Edelman, chief medical officer of the American Lung Association, says that the study is interesting, but "you have to have enough additional animal studies to make sure the effect is reproducible and to make sure that there are no overt toxic effects... It's a little more than tantalizing because it's a compound that we know has been in humans and has not caused major problems."

Though THC has been shown to inhibit tumor growth in cancer, how it affects lung cancer has been previously unknown.

Some lung cancer is exceptionally aggressive and not treatable via chemotherapy, because some lung tumors over-produce the EGF receptor.

The mice in the study, after having been injected with human lung cancer cells, experienced 50% tumor shrinkage within three weeks of being treated with THC.