A recent piece in the Louisville-Courier Journal took note of the War on Cancer declared forty years ago by President Nixon. The President stated at the time that we should use the same effort we used in going to the moon to defeat cancer. The article went on to discuss the amount of progress that has been made in those forty years and the significance of that progress. Gene research has shown much promise but, the general consensus of the article was that although some progress has been made there is much more work to do.
Nowhere in the article is mentioned all the work that has been done on marijuana as it relates to cancer. Once one reviews the existing body of work done in America and overseas, one can only wonder what is the reason those working to cure cancer are ignoring this evidence? The number of research and studies I found was quite significant.
Here are just a few:

M. Hashibe et al., "Marijuana use and the risk of lung and upper aerodigestive tract cancers: results of a population-based case-control study," Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention 15, no. 10 (October 2006): 1829-183...

Richard E. Musty and Rita Rossi, "Effects of Smoked Cannabis and Oral _9-Tetrahydrocannabinol on Nausea and Emesis After Cancer Chemotherapy: A Review of State Clinical Trials," Journal of Cannabis Therapeutics, issue 1 (2001): 29-55. F...

"[THC] inhibited tumour-cell proliferation in vitro and decreased tumour-cell Ki67 immunostaining"; "THC does not facilitate tumor growth nor decreases patient survival."
" Guzman M., et al., "A Pilot Clinical Study of Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol in Patients With Recurrent Glioblastoma Multiforme," British Journal of Cancer, July 2006

" McKallip, Robert J., et al., "Cannabidiol-Induced Apoptosis in Human Leukemia Cells: A Novel Role of Cannabidiol in the Regulation of p22phox and Nox4 Expression," Molecular Pharmacology, June 5, 2006

" Ligresti, Alessia et al., "Anti-Tumor Activity of Plant Cannabinoids with Emphasis on the Effect of Cannabidiol on Human Breast Carcinoma," Journal of Pharmacology And Experimental Therapeutics, May 25, 2006

And here is a link to more: http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=7008

This is just some of the information available, there is much more. It would seem that President Nixon, by rejecting the report of his own Shafer Commission on Drugs and declaring the War on Drugs , sabotaged his own War on Cancer by eliminating from research and even discussion the possible medical uses of marijuana as it relates to treating cancer. The media is equally at fault for abdicating it's responsibility to tell the whole story and for following government policy by not reporting any story that might put marijuana in a positive light. In an atmosphere where the anti-cancer properties of an apple get a prime time story, the spectacular results of the Tashkin study, which showed that regular marijuana smokers contracted head neck and lung cancers at the same rate or less than nonsmokers, should have been front page news.
The time has come for us to get over the fact that marijuana prohibition is a mistake, and that continuing it is equivalent to shooting ourselves in the foot. For sure we must redirect our efforts to find a cure for cancer, but this time let us truly use all the tools at our disposal.