I guess I'd have to say No but with an exception. What may be cancerous with marijuana and is with cigarettes is the act of smoking the substance. There is some question that either would be cancerous non smoked but unlike marijuana cigarettes have a whole lot of funky stuff added such as ammonia for one example. All just to get it to smoke a certain way and or to amplify the effect of nicotine addiction. Perhaps were these additives not present tobacco wouldn't be as cancerous as it is now? Sure you could point to people who chew tobacco but there again most comes from the same source willing to alter their product to get you hooked to buying it so it also has additives usually. By all rights chewing, smoking pipes, cigar or cigarettes is a nasty first time experience. It's a wonder any do continue to smoke tobacco. Usually it's some sort of peer pressure that gets young people smoking and it can have you completely addicted in as little as two weeks depending on how much you actually use. Any way, since no worthy study that I know of has proven marijuana itself is harmful there is always the option to eat it, thereby avoiding the possibly cancer inducing process of smoking it. Thereby rendering it safe. The problem with eating it however is that you're more likely to have dosing issues and/or moments of being high when you wish you weren't. On the other hand, if taking it for certain medical issues you'll generally also feel better in some ways.
The whole cancer connection is bogus but if you are going to play the what if game there, why stop? What about....what if eating out was as nasty as licking the underside of the toilet seat of a public restroom would you still eat out? Or what if money was as toxic as radioactive waste, would you still strive to get as much money as you can?
I mean really though, life is hard enough without having to dream up even more to worry about.
Since we've touched on tobacco let me include one last rant, I too am a smoker, one of these weak people addicted to cigarettes. When I started packs of brand name cigarettes could be found for as low as 55 cents. They quickly shot up to 85 cents and not too long after $1 and I swore that if it ever went above a dollar I'd quit. I did actually try but I just found it to distracting to have that urge to smoke keep popping up and me having to fight it. Well there was a reason, reason being, "sin taxes" that artificial amount tacked on to ease the burden on the system that health care for smokers represent. Just like smokers are addicted to smoking, governments are addicted to spending tax revenue. When the prices started to rise suddenly a lot of the smokers decided to quit this was not only hurting the tobacco companies and the millions of stores pushing their product but it was also hurting governments. Now another that was true of cigarettes back when I started smoking is they had lower levels of nicotine and they had yet to perfect how to amplify the nicotine making it even more addictive. They were allowed to do this by government however, in order to strengthen addictions so as to keep customers longer. Now a days for the average pack a day smoker you're talking an approximately $200 per month habit. That's huge when you stop to think a lot of smokers tend to belong to lower income brackets. I mean I've seen lease deals for cars recently that were at that price. Granted not great cars but hey when you make minimum wage almost any affordable new car looks great.
The point is even though the governments restrict when and where you can use cigarettes and spend tax payer money on why you should quit. They allow big tobacco to make everything even more addictive to keep the money rolling in even that to the government as a sin tax. If it weren't for that tax there's no benefit beyond normal sales tax governments would likely ban it. As it stands now in most populated areas there is some place, gas station, convenience store, restaurant, bar, drug stores, grocery stores, etc. nearby that one can obtain cigarettes if they can't resist temptation. People would be more inclined to quit if you had to travel ridiculous distances to stock up out of state. Sure people would be upset if government took their fix from them and forced them to quit but at least this time they could be truthfully doing it for people's benefit and the money people would save would help soften the blow. Unlike how they've made marijuana illegal without any conclusive proof of how bad it is and put people in prison for growing it or using it.
