Scientific journals are not grocery stores where one can gather findings for a policy like ingredients for a soup.
Two or three letters show up in medical journals describing cases where doctors suspect a possible connection between marijuana use and tongue cancer. (36) Tongue cancer then pops up in prevention literature as an additional danger research has indicated may be associated with marijuana use. (37) This is not the way the validity of scientific assertions is established.
One study indicates a correlation between maternal marijuana use and lymphoblastic leukemia in new borns. (38) Marijuana is well-known as an anti-emetic. Other anti-emetic drugs were shown in the same study to correlate just as highly as marijuana. Some prevention literature now indicates that marijuana has been linked with leukemia. (39)
These warnings are consistent with policy, but do they reflect accurate science? Is there any evidence to predict that marijuana use will produce statistically significant incidence of tongue cancer and/or leukemia in children? The research data in these instances support hypotheses and further research, but they are not singularly persuasive and have been subject to critically negative review. (40)
The discovery of the cannabinoid receptor system occurred in 1990. (41) Despite the invalidation of most of the biochemical research on marijuana in the 1980’s, this didn’t prevent the DEA from declaring in 1991 that marijuana was a dangerous drug because of its effects of cellular activities.
“Cannabinoids . . .wreak havoc with the chemical process of cell division . . .cellular activity decreases. This interference can eventually stop cellular activity causing the cells to die . . .every function in the body is depressed.”(42)
This is apparently yet another incorrect use of Billy Martin’s 1986 article in the Pharmacological Reviews.