Newsgroups: alt.smokers,alt.drugs
From: [lamon t g] at [cs.washington.edu] (Lamont Granquist)
Subject: Re: An idea for healthier and more entertaining smoking?...
Sender: [n--s] at [beaver.cs.washington.edu] (USENET News System)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 93 01:14:54 GMT

[s v kizlik] at [cybernet.cse.fau.edu] (Stephen Kizlik) writes:
>Actually most such rumors are blatantly false.  For example, "pot
>kills brain cells" emerged from an early-80's Tulane study in which a
>Rhesus monkey inhaled the "equivalent of 100 joints" (which, I suppose,
>leaves a tremendous amount of leeway for the actual quantity consumed
>by the poor primate) - in a little over 5 minutes, fitted with a gas
>mask.
>Of course, if *you* were to inhale, say, 100 tobacco cigarettes in
>a period of five minutes, with **little to no oxygen**, a biopsy
>would reveal loads of dead brain cells.  However, the Drug Warriors
>picked up on the study, its actual nature isn't of interest to most
>people, but "pot kills brain cells" makes a good headline.  Many
>"experts" - that is, people whose careers depend on illegal pot -
>will still rabidly affirm this semi-fact.  So far as I know there
>is no reputable stdy which produces such evidence.

Heath did the studies.  He claims to have controlled for anoxia, and
has addressed the problem of determining what is equivalent for a
rhesus monkey.  I believe he also found positive results in his monkeys
which were shot up with IV THC.

However, Heath actually didn't find dead brain cells (which would have
been a good indication of brain damage).  What he did find were things
like increase in the average width of the synaptic gap, clumping of synaptic
vesicles, etc.  Which are considered to be rather lousy indications
of brain damage.  They are particularly bad indications when the procedure
is not carried out double-blind and Heath did not rigorously use
double-blind procedures.  Clumping of synaptic vesicles is, in fact, a
normal variant of mammallian brain structure.  In plain english, Heath
was an incompetent idiot.

The source of your information I presume is Herer's Book.  Unfortunately
Jack Herer doesn't know shit about pharmacology.  His treatment of Heath's
studies criticize it on points which Heath addressed, credit Heath with
having found dead brain cells which Heath never did, and miss all the important
points that Heath can be solidly discredited on.