Hey, Lance Armstrong, heavy beer drinking, NOT pot smoking, leads to more lung cancer

Something to think about the next time you see a prominent cancer survivor touting the nutritional benefits of beer.  It’s a new study that quotes researchers who, if you wish to have healthy lungs with which to live, strongly suggest you curb your alcohol – especially beer – use.

A new study links heavy alcohol consumption with a greater risk of developing lung cancer. The study included approximately 126,000 people who enrolled between 1978 and 1985, and were followed until 2008. The researchers found 1,852 people developed lung cancer during that time.

Having three or more alcoholic drinks a day increased lung cancer risk by 30 percent. Heavy beer consumption carried a slightly higher risk than wine and liquor, Medical News Today reports.

“Heavy drinking has multiple harmful effects, including cardiovascular complications and increased risk for lung cancer,” lead researcher Stanton Siu, MD, of Kaiser Permanente said in a news release. “We did not see a relationship between moderate drinking and lung cancer development.”

Why pick on Lance Armstrong?  Certainly there are other celebrity cancer survivors who’ve shilled for beer companies, right?  (Actually, I couldn’t find any; if you do, please add them in the comments.)  It’s not just that I’m jealous he was more successful (so far) at passing drug tests in his former career than I was in mine.  It’s that his LIVESTRONG website continues to lie about cancer risks from cannabis use:

• “The same risks smokers of tobacco face may also threaten marijuana users over a long period of time.“
• “…frequent and/or long-term users of marijuana had an increased risk of testicular cancer…” Irony alert!
• “Smokers of any illicit toxic chemicals, like cocaine or marijuana, can cause negative effects on the lungs and increase the risks of getting diseases like emphysema and cancer.“
• “the smoke contains some of the same destructive carcinogenic ingredients that tobacco smoke does, but in greater quantity.“

When, in fact, the biggest case control study on the subject of marijuana use and pulmonary disease was concluded after 30 years and found “smoking marijuana, even regularly and heavily, does not lead to lung cancer.”

The new findings “were against our expectations,” said Donald Tashkin of the University of California at Los Angeles, a pulmonologist who has studied marijuana for 30 years.

“We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use,” he said. “What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect.

Though I have to give LIVESTRONG some credit for this part:

“Pot is illegal. As long as it remains illegal, you could be arrested for smoking pot. The stress of being arrested and charged with a crime would not be good for your health.“

But would it be as bad as a Michelob Ultra?

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