Book review of A Women’s Guide to Cannabis

I wish I could write like this author. She writes with an engaging style that is absorbing to read. Even as an incurably heterosexual male with no confusion or doubts about my gender or sexuality, I enjoyed reading this book whose very title clearly states that I am not among its intended audience. While I wish I could write like this author, I am thankful I do not think like this author. I found her book's misinformation mind boggling. Many unfounded claims abound with opinion masquerading as fact, but I will focus just on two of its 224 pages, those that discuss health issues about which I dare say I can speak with some authority.

Among two big bloopers on merely those two pages, one fawning passage makes an especially bold and baseless claim: “But a joint a day can actually improve lung tissue and make us healthier.” Any reader with half a brain would realize this statement is grotesque. Any tobacco smoker with only half a lung remaining will attest that smoking anything cannot make anyone any healthier. From among hundreds of medical studies worth citing about how smoking cannabis adversely affects lung health, the book cites just one, but (willfully?) misinterprets that study, mistaking quantity (lung capacity) for quality (lung tissue). The book thus denies any health risks.

I cannot fathom where the author conjured her statistic of “a joint a day for over twenty years.” The study spanned 20 years. Its findings can perhaps be confusing to a lay reader. Among its conclusions are that smoking a joint a day for up to 7 years typically produced increased lung capacity, but that the increase levels off after 7 years, and then within 20 years lung capacity begins to decrease. That study measured only lung capacity, not lung tissue. Size, not health. Quantity, not quality. Capacity may increase only due to the practice of deeply inhaling and of holding one's breath, a needless practice of many cannabis smokers. It is not the smoking or the cannabis that causes any increase in capacity, but the deep breathing. A more healthful manner of increasing lung capacity through deep breathing over the course of 7 years is to practice yoga or free diving or singing or playing wind instruments. The benefits of those techniques won't level off after only 7 years, and won't pollute lung tissue no matter how many years.

According to the author's way of thinking, a book with 224 pages is better than any book with 124 pages. Little matter if those 224 pages are filled with misconceptions and misinformation, while those 124 pages provide evidence-based solid science.

Look up the scientific study yourself. “Association between Marijuana Exposure and Pulmonary Function Over 20 Years” was authored Mark J. Pletcher and others, and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Internal Medicine on January 11, 2012. It is on pages 173-181 of Volume 307, number 2. You can find its full text at: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/1104848

Incidentally, I happen to smoke cannabis. Its cannabinoids can benefit many parts of the human body, but I do not delude myself that my lungs are among them. Nor would I mislead any readers. The author is not the only one at fault. Her editor and publisher were asleep at their keyboards. Or maybe they were too stoned to thoroughly read the manuscript that they allowed to wander into print unedited.