Fall Fund Drive A Success-Poet's Survival Assured!
Trip Start
Sep 07, 2006
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8
20
Trip End
Dec 19, 2006
Amsterdam,
Netherlands
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Today it's Halloween in New Orleans and throughout the USA but it seems to have little meaning here in Holland. I miss Halloween in New Orleans-since the early 1990s it's turned into one of the festive high points of the year, with the insane costumery and public high-jinks for which the Crescent City is so well known. But it's great to be alive here in Amsterdam, or anywhere I might be on any given day. That's what they say in New Orleans: "I woke up today, it's a great day!"
And when things get rough, there's always the cheering response of one's friends coming to the rescue. I don't know if it's in bad taste to call people by name, but this is a Fund Drive and on the radio we always called out the names of the donors unless they expressly stated otherwise, so I'd like to take this little space to thank my dear friends Dimitri Mugianis and Roman Ferede of Brooklyn, Cary Loren of Oak Park MI, Jay Stewart of Olympia WA, Mary Moses of New Orleans, Eric Labowitz of Philo CA, Andy Schwartz of New York City and Peter C. Cavanaugh of Flint, Michigan, just relocated to central California. Thanks a million, everybody!
My old pal John Rosevear, author of one of the first books on marijuana about 40 years ago, took the trouble to type out and send me the following report containing encouraging news from The University Record (Volume 62, number 7) from the University of Michigan:
Study fails to find link between marijuana use and cancer
By Karl Leif Bates
Although marijuana smoke is known to contain carcinogenic agents, and many studies in humans, animals and cell cultures have indicated that marijuana smoking may predispose a person to cancer, a large epidemiological study of cancer patients and cancer-free controls in Los Angeles has found no clear association between pot-smoking and cancer.
"We didn't find any evidence for an increased risk of head and neck or lung cancers among heavy, long-term marijuana users," says study leader Hal Morgenstern, chair of epidemiology at the School of Public Health. "I wouldn't go so far as to say there is no increased cancer risk from smoking marijuana, but if there is an effect, it is not very large."
The study, which involved colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Southern California, zeroed in on head and neck cancers and lung cancer because they typically are associated with tobacco smoking.
The team interviewed more than 1,200 Los Angeles-area cancer patients and more than 1,000 cancer-free control subjects, matched by age, gender, and neighborhood. Each subject's reported use of marijuana was measured carefully and quantified as 'joint-years' of use, where one joint-year is equivalent to smoking one marijuana cigarette per day for one year.
Users who had accumulated more than 30 joint-years had a higher cancer incidence, but this association disappeared when the findings were adjusted for other risk factors, including tobacco use.
"The association of these cancers with marijuana use, even long-term or heavy use, is not strong and may be too small to detect," Morgenstern says.
As an offshoot of this study, UCLA epidemiologist Zuo-Feng Zhang also looked at possible genetic differences between the cancer patients and the controls and found no clear pattern that would indicate that smoking marijuana had more risk for some people than for others.
Though there is ample biological evidence that marijuana smoke should be harmful to humans, earlier epidemiological studies of its cancer-causing potential had found mixed results, Morgenstern says.
"What's been lacking is a scientifically-rigorous study involving a large number of middle-aged or older adults with heavy, long-term exposures to marijuana. Because heavy marijuana use is a relatively new cultural phenomenon that started around 1970 among persons under age 25, this sort of study hasn't been possible until recently. Most of the subjects in this study were over 45, the time in life when the risk of lung and head and neck cancers becomes appreciable.
"The negative results reported here underscore the importance of conducting well-designed, population-based, epidemiological studies to assess health risks," says study co-author Dr. Donald Tashkin, a pulmonary medicine specialist at UCLA. "Several clinical reports have indicated an unusually high portion of marijuana smokers among individuals diagnosed with lung and head and neck cancer. But while this was interpreted as suggesting an association between marijuana and respiratory cancer, such findings are uncontrolled and require rigorously conducted epidemiological studies for conformation."
"Though this study was more rigorous than those attempted previously, we did have some concerns that the subjects might not accurately recall how much marijuana they smoked many years ago," Morgenstern says. "We expected some underreporting, but we actually found it was in line with national and California studies on drug use." Eleven percent of the control group had accumulated 10 or more joint-years (equivalent to 3,350 or more joints).
Another source of difficulty in the study is that marijuana is much less standardized than the tobacco in cigarettes, and it is smoked in many different ways, so quantities and dosages are much harder to pin down with a measure like joint-years.
Tobacco studies long have relied on a measure called 'pack years', in which scientists can rely on very specific content analysis of each brand the user smoked to calculate dosages.
Despite these limitations, Morgenstern says the results did not suggest any harmful effects of marijuana use, using different methods of analysis. Pot-smoking did not appear to increase the risk of cancer in this population, regardless of how much tobacco individuals had smoked in their lifetimes.
The study, Marijuana Use and the Risk of Lung and Upper-aerodigestive tract Cancers: Results of a Population-based Case-control Study, was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and appears in the October issue of the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.
Yeah, I like that concept of "joint-years." I'll close this post by including the latest episodes of the John Sinclair Radio Show for your listening and dancing pleasure:
John Sinclair Radio Show 109
The Dolphins, Amsterdam
Saturday, October 21, 2006 @ 3:30-4:30 pm [20-0637]
Back at The Dolphins on a lovely Saturday evening during the huge Amsterdam Dance Weekend and our special guest this afternoon is Lynda Arnold, a dance music producer and artist known as Divasonic from San Francisco who's in town for the festivities. We listen to a couple of cuts by Divasonic, and Lynda and I improvise a duet with flute and voice. Plus there's music from Bob Dylan, Big Joe Turner, Alma "The Lollipop Mama" Mondy, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Aretha Franklin, Billie Holiday and John Boutte & Cubanismo.
Listen to the John Sinclair Show #109 from the Dolphins (.mp3)
Playlist #109
[01] Opening Music: Bob Dylan: Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat
[02] Intro, Comments & Opening Tokes with Lynda Arnold & Henk
[03] Big Joe Turner: I'm in Sharp When I Hit the Coast
[04] Alma Mondy: Street Walking Daddy
[05] Bobby "Blue" Bland: It's My Life Baby
[06] Conversation with Lynda Arnold
[07] Divasonic: Candy Store
[08] Conversation with Lynda Arnold
[09] John Sinclair & Lynda Arnold: spiritual
[10] Divasonic: Summertime
[11] Conversation with Lynda Arnold
[12] Aretha Franklin: Baby I Love You
[13] Billie Holiday: But Beautiful
[14] Comments & Closing ID
[15] John Boutte & Cubanismo: Shallow Water Suite
Hosted by John Sinclair for Radio Free Amsterdam
Produced, Engineered, Mastered & Posted by Henk Botwinik
Executive Producer: Henk Botwinik
Sponsored by Eat at Jo's in the Melkweg
Special thanks to Radouane & the staff at The Dolphins
©(P) 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
John Sinclair Radio Show 110
The Dolphins, Amsterdam
Monday, October 30, 2006 @ 9:30-10:30 pm [20-0638]
I had to drag myself from my sick bed to join Henk Botwinik & Larry Hayden at The Dolphins for the 110th episode of the radio show, but it was worth the trip. Our guest is Lee Bellavance of Portland, Maine who's here as the Foreign Editor of Café Review magazine, so we've got some poetry recordings by Diane DiPrima and Ed Sanders from the album 12 Great Americans for the program this evening, plus great music from Brother Tyrone & the Mindbenders, Deacon John, Howlin' Wolf, Lightnin' Malcolm, Jimmy "T-99" Nelson, and the original recordings of a couple of my own favorite numbers.
Listen to the John Sinclair Show #110 from the Dolphins (.mp3)
Playlist #110
[01] Opening Music: Bro. Tyrone & the Mindbenders: Blue Ghetto
[02] Intro, Comments & Opening Tokes with Larry & Henk
[03] John Sinclair & His Blues Scholars: Ain`t Nobody`s Bizness
[04] Deacon John: You Upset Me Baby
[05] Howlin' Wolf: I Asked for Water
[06] Conversation with Lee Bellavance of Café Review
[07] Diane diPrima: Rant from a cool place
[08] Lightnin' Malcolm: So Many Women
[09] Jimmy "T-99" Nelson: Be Knowing What I Got to Do
[10] Conversation with Lee Bellavance
[11] Ed Sanders: Soft Man > Sheep Fuck Poem
[12] Ed Sanders: It's All Right
[13] Conversation with Lee Bellavance & Closing ID
[14] John Sinclair with Fluxedo Junction: It's All Good
Hosted by John Sinclair for Radio Free Amsterdam
Produced, Engineered, Mastered & Posted by Henk Botwinik
Executive Producer: Larry Hayden
Sponsored by Eat at Jo's
Special thanks to Radouane & the staff at The Dolphins
©(P) 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
