British Lung Foundation - Campaigns

Campaigns

The British Lung Foundation campaigns for improvements in all areas of lung health. Breathe Easy supporters and members of the general public have worked with the BLF to ensure that these issues remain on the agenda at Westminster - and in the political chambers of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The BLF also campaigns to raise public awareness of lung disease and the impact it has on so many lives through poster campaigns, events and by maintaining a media profile.

In June 2012 the British Lung Foundation released a report looking at the health impacts of smoking cannabis. In one section, the report claimed "each cannabis cigarette increases the chances of developing lung cancer by as much as an entire packet of 20 tobacco cigarettes". The report referenced the 2008 study, “Cannabis use and risk of lung cancer: a case-control study” (Aldington et al), published in the European Respiratory Journal, to support the claim, which was repeated by the charity's then chief executive, Dame Helena Shovelton, in media interviews. In a BBC radio interview, Kevin Williamson, author of "Drugs and the Party line", claimed that there was "no scientific basis to the claim", citing an earlier study of 2200 people published in Cancer Epidemiological Biomarkers and Prevention that had found "that the association of these cancers with marijuana, even long-term or heavy use, is not strong and may be below practically detectable limits". Williamson then asked the charity's representative, to cite the research that supported the charity's claim. When he declined to do so, Williamson accused the charity of "putting out bogus information" for "headline grabbing". Online journalist Keelan Balderson accused the charity of peddling "a long debunked myth" (claiming that it was not the first such incident, citing an earlier BLF claim that "3 joints are equal to 20 cigarettes", taken from a report published in 2002, before the publication of the European Respiratory Journal study.). Peter Reynolds, leader of the political party Cannabis Law Reform (Clear), described the report as a "dangerously irresponsible mix of conjecture, extremist opinion and scaremongering". The British Lung Foundation’s responded by asserting that the report was based on sound research, and that "the report references over 80 peer-reviewed research papers, is the most comprehensive report of its kind yet compiled, and has itself been peer-reviewed by independent experts".