Daily weed smokers more likely to suffer heart attack, stroke in United States

Daily users of weed are much more likely than non-smokers to get a heart attack or stroke, as per a research funded by the National Institutes of Health and published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

“We know that toxins are released when cannabis is burned, similar to those found in tobacco smoke,” New York Post quoted Abra Jeffers as saying, who is a data analyst at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and former researcher at the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco, where the study was based. 

“We've known for a long time that smoking tobacco is linked to heart disease, and this study is evidence that smoking cannabis appears to also be a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, which is the leading cause of death in the United States,” Jeffers’ statement continued. 

“Cannabis use could be an important, underappreciated source of heart disease," he added

Data on 434,104 American people between the ages of 18 and 74 from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention were analysed by researchers during the period from 2016 to 2020. A little over 4% of people used cannabis daily, 7% did so roughly five days a month, and 88.9% had not used the substance in the previous 30 days.

Approximately 74% of current users reported smoking the drug most of the time.

“Cannabis use is increasing in both prevalence and frequency, while conventional tobacco smoking is declining,” said Dr Salomeh Keyhani, a professor of medicine at UCSF and senior author of the study, in a separate statement. 

“Cannabis use by itself might, over time, become the more important risk factor," he added.