Older marijuana users are at a high risk of heart attack and stroke, while older daily users are 34% more likely to develop heart failure, according to new studies.
Overall, evidence is still inconclusive for cannabis use and adverse cardiovascular outcomes, resulting in an urgent need for carefully designed, prospective short- and long-term studies.
Basically this study has a blind spot that even the author admits to.
In that most people hospitalized are not hospitalized for cannabis alone, and a lot of the data right now is either biased, or outdated on it's own.
There are points to things like Marijuana is linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular failure at 34% in the study of:
" Marijuana and cocaine users at 34% higher risk for heart attacks."
Though interesting enough:
Inpatient Sample database from 2010 to 2014, Desai et al identified 2,459,856 hospitalized cannabis users, of whom 66,179 (2.7%) experienced arrhythmia, mostly commonly atrial fibrillation.
So I can see why doctors are suspicious, but I wouldn't read to much into it.
And its not even published yet and it has not been replicated. I wish I had a science site that would only recognize science discoveries that have been confirmed by two additional labs outside of the first one that did the study. And that for hard science. For social sciences I want to see half a dozen confirmation.
Is this really news when talking about smoking? Yeah, you're making molecule salad when you combust any organics, and there's going to be carcinogens in there, just entropically.
I understand it's important to study, but it feels very misleading to say 'marijuana use' when smoking is the only delivery being examined.
I’d be curious to know the effects of intake method on these outcomes. Is this inherent to the cannabinoids or can it be linked back to combustion/smoking?
Look, I support marijuana legalization, but people shouldn't be blind to the health risks of marijuana, especially when smoked. Is it as bad as tobacco or cigarettes? For the most part, no, of course not. But it's not some wonder drug that has zero risks and cures all diseases like some would like to believe, such a thing does not exist. You can be for drug legalization, but not bury information about the health risks marijuana does pose or pretend it's risk free. If anything this needs to be dug into even more, as it becomes a legal recreational substance that's widely used. And they should keep researching if there mag be therapeutic applications too. There's likely both risks and benefits with marijuana, just like any drug.