A National Institutes of Health-funded study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association suggests that smoking cannabis daily could increase the risk of heart attack and stroke.
The study used data from 435,000 U.S. adults, the NIH said in a release. Daily use of weed, particularly through smoking, boosted the likelihood of heart attacks by 25% and strokes by 42% compared with people who don’t use the drug.
Around 75% of the study’s respondents who consumed cannabis reported smoking as their method of choice. The other 25% vaped, drank, or ate products containing the drug, the NIH said.
Nearly 90% of the study’s total respondents reported not using cannabis at all, with 7% using it less than daily and 4% using it daily, the American Heart Association said in a release.
Smoking was singled out among those methods due to toxins and particulate matter released by burning marijuana.
“We know that toxins are released when cannabis is burned, similar to those found in tobacco smoke. … 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,” Dr. Abra Jeffers, a data analyst at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and one of the study’s authors, said in the NIH release.
The study found that people who didn’t smoke tobacco still incurred risks from consuming marijuana.
“Among never‐tobacco smokers, daily cannabis use was also associated with myocardial infarction … stroke … and the composite of coronary heart disease, myocardial infarction, and stroke,” the authors wrote.
Just over 28% of the daily cannabis users in the study had never smoked cigarettes, with that figure jumping to just over 44% for people who used marijuana less than daily, the AHA said.