People who smoke marijuana frequently have a higher risk of heart attack and stroke, according to a study published Wednesday.
The articlepublished in The Journal of the American Heart Association, is an analysis of responses to the US government’s annual risk behavior survey from 2016 to 2020.
Respondents answered health questions, including reporting their own health problems related to heart disease.
About 4 percent of respondents reported daily marijuana use, which the researchers found increased the likelihood of a heart attack by 25 percent and stroke by 42 percent. Among never smokers, daily use was associated with a 49% higher risk of heart attack and a more than doubled risk of stroke, the study showed.
About three-quarters of respondents said smoking was their primary method of using weed. The other quarter was consumed by vaping, eating or drinking.
“Cannabis smoke releases the same toxins and particles that tobacco does,” said the study’s first author, Abra M. Jeffers, a data analyst at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She conducted the analysis during her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco.
The study is merely observational in its review of survey responses. does not provide conclusive evidence that regular marijuana use causes heart disease.
Even so, researchers and experts said they are concerned about its effects, especially as cannabis use has increased in recent years. Thirty-eight states have legalized the medical use of marijuana, and 24 have begun to allow recreational use.
Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said in an email that as cannabis use has increased, “there has also been an increase in the occurrence of adverse health effects such as addiction, respiratory problems, accidents, psychosis and cardiovascular events.” .
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is considering whether to follow the recommendations of a panel of federal scientists at the Food and Drug Administration, which concluded last year that marijuana should be reclassified into a less restrictive category of controlled substances. They cited a lower potential for abuse than other drugs, as well as the potential medical benefits of marijuana.
But the authors of the new paper warned that frequent marijuana use “could be an important, unappreciated risk factor leading to many preventable deaths.”
“This study shows that smoking cannabis can be just as harmful as smoking tobacco,” said Dr. Salomeh Keyhani, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and senior author of the study.
“Cannabis is marketed to the public as a substance that is harmless and can be good for you,” added Dr. Keyhani. “I am concerned that we are sleepwalking into a public health crisis. Progress on smoking may be reversed.”
Heart disease is already the leading cause of death in the country. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 695,000 Americans died in 2021 from cardiovascular causes, such as coronary heart disease.
Other research has documented an increase in marijuana use. The percentage of Americans who reported marijuana use it rose to 17 percent last year from 7 percent in 2013, according to a Gallup poll.
A study published in August and funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse more details on consumption by age. From 2012 to 2022, reported use among adults 30 and under increased to 44 percent from 28 percent, while daily use increased to 11 percent from 6 percent. Among 35- to 50-year-olds, the rate for overall use rose to 28 percent from 13 percent.
A 2023 federal survey recorded past-year marijuana use among 8 percent of eighth graders, 18 percent of 10th graders and 29 percent of 12th graders.
The new study was funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, which is part of the National Institutes of Health. The surveys analyzed came from 434,104 respondents, who were aged 18 to 74. 60 percent were white, 12 percent were black, and 19 percent were Hispanic.
Dr. David C. Goff, director of a cardiovascular division at the institute that funded the research, cautioned that comparing the theoretical harms of smoking to marijuana was difficult because of different consumption patterns. People tend to consume more cigarettes per day, but marijuana users tend to inhale marijuana more deeply and hold it for longer.
“What we can say is that it’s a bad idea to put smoke in your lungs,” he said.
Even relatively occasional weed use was linked to heart disease in the new study. Weekly use is associated with a 3 percent greater risk of heart attack and a 5 percent greater chance of stroke.
Robert Page, a pharmacist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, who was not involved in the new study, said patients and their health care providers should have open conversations about cannabis use. But he added that even doctors often ignored the risks.
“People don’t know the facts,” he said. “They think because it’s natural, it’s safe.”