Cannabis and Cancer

[Mucker]

So it seems quite obvious that plant matter is a contributing cause of cancer. Given that plants are rooted in (the) earth and they draw water from it, it is surely inevitable that tar from the peat will also be drawn in. If this is circulated to some extent around the plant, then if one digests the plant matter, one will also be ingesting the tar also. This peat -> tar link must be generalisable to all plants, so there must also surely be a link between all plant digestion and the forming of cancer.

Tea drinking.

Boiling the tea's leaves and drinking the liquid should give a high rate of cancer among tea drinkers, shouldn't it? Surely stomach cancer will be prominent among tea drinkers, who soak the tea's leaves in boiling water and then ingest the liquid. Those who smoke plant matter (including tobacco) are taking the leaves of plants that ingest tar (as all must do), and heating them to breaking point. This can't be much different to boiling the leaves, and there may not be much difference in the temperature(s) reached. The smoker's flame turns the tar (amongst other things) into smoke and the chemical(s) are taken to the human body this way. Tar becomes smoke at the temperatures imposed upon it and when it then reaches the lungs it begins to cool, and it becomes solid again. Thus cancer begins. But will the tar in plants not become liquid in the temperatures inherant in boiling water? Will tar not pass (even through the bag!) and into the liquid, to then be ingested by the human? However plant matter is ingested there is a lot of research (which may not even be credible, but there is a great deal of supporting evidence) that shows tea drinking to be beneficial to the human body, and specifically that drinking green tea actually lowers the risk of the onset of cancer! Could it not also be true that the ingestion of other plant life (such as using herbs in foods etc) could inhibit (or help, whatever the case may be) the risk(s) of cancer? The article linked below cites various reports which seem to show that using cannabis reduces the risk of cancer growth (as most reports of tea drinking and cancer links show!), and the article itself concludes that more research is needed, which is almost certainly the case. It could be that drinking tea lowers the risk of cancer growth and that cannabis consumption increases the risk of cancer growth. However it could also be that both[/I] lower the risk of cancer growth, or it could be that both increase the risk of cancer too! As the article says more research is needed, and as I have said this could not be more true.

Plant life

Research into plant life and the tracing of tar should not only concentrate on the leaves though. What about fruit and vegetables which are deemed so fit for consumption (in fact we are encouraged to eat these)? Does the tar actually pass into them? Perhaps this is why these (along with flowers themselves) are coloured differently? And what about coffee beans? Surely their dark brown colouring gives some indication that their growth is sapped by the soil they grow in?

The article

 

[chuck u farley]

No offense Mucker, but this whole premise of plants soaking up tar from the ground doesn't make any sense. Plants absorb from the soil solution water and ions, metals but also ions such as sulfate, ammonium, phosphate, and some other non-metals. Any "tars", carbon compounds, are made by the plant. It's interesting that you mention a "peat-tar" connection. Soils with peat in them are in northern climes where the rate of microbial digestion of organic componds is very slow. Such soils are very rare in warmer climates.
I believe that most of what is considered tar in cigarette smoke is composed of compounds formed because of incomplete combustion of certain carbon compounds. Most of what are in a teabag, coffee, etc. are tannins. These are various aromatic compounds. They seem to have a variety of functions in plants, many of them related to their antimicrobial properties. Whether any of them are carcinogenic or anti-carcinogenic I don't know.
But the point of my reply is that there are some fallacies contained in your message. Plants soak up very little in the way of organic compounds from their environments. The brown coloring of coffee is due to the presence of tannins. The coffee plant absorbed water and minerals from the soil solution and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and used these to build some organic molecules. They then used these organic molecules to construct those tannins.