Another Blow to Marijuana Smoking

Legalization of pot is becoming a greater ‘cause’ these days. However, smoking the weed may not be so harmless as imagined. The frequency of testicular cancer has increased since the 1950s by 3% to 6% a year in the USA, Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand; at the same time, marijuana use in these regions has also increased. Coincidence or an association? Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have just published the results of a study to explore this in the online version of Cancer.

Men aged 18 to 44 living in the Seattle are and with a diagnosis of invasive testicular germ cell cancer were enrolled. There were 369 such men diagnosed between 1999 through 2006. Their responses to questions on their lifetime use of marijuana were compared with those from almost three times as many age-matched men without tumors living in the same area.

Men with testis tumors were 30% more likely than controls to report ever using marijuana, and 70% more likely to be current users. Put another way, previous and current users were 1.3-times and 1.7-times more likely to develop a testicular tumor than non-users. The risks were slightly greater in those who started using marijuana before the age of 18, and in those who used it at least one day a week or more often.

Apart from the findings in this study, regular and frequent use of marijuana has been linked reduced testosterone levels, lower sperm quality, and impotence. Maybe this latest result will give further pause to those who decry any control of the weed.