6 ms·

Marijuana use holds three-fold blood pressure death risk: study

69 points by cyanbane 9y ago

crb002 9y ago
Was it the weed or the munchies? I'd say insulin related from munchies.
- frenchy 9y ago
  Or sodium intake related to the munchies.
- graphitezepp 9y ago
  Many heavy users do not typically make the healthiest life choices, at least in my anecdata.
- aphextron 9y ago
  This was my guess too. There is a strong overlap between weed smokers and daily fast food eaters.
mpolichette 9y ago
This is great, it really points to the how criminalization of marijuana has been hurtful to society. People are going to continue to smoke it, legal or not, but now that its (somewhat) legal, we can learn things about how it effects the body!
- cr1895 9y ago
  Not quite...as it is still federally a Schedule 1 substance research is hampered.
nxsynonym 9y ago
>> "If marijuana use is implicated in cardiovascular diseases and deaths, then it rests on the health community and policy makers to protect the public." Like how the policy makers protect the public from Alcohol, tobacco, and over-the-counter meds? Also a 1200 person study isn't really enough to draw any major conclusions from. Of course ingesting anything substance of any kind frequently over a period of time is bound to be harmful to some degree. What we need is context and not one-off sensationalist studies that are used as propaganda fodder on either side of the debate.
- CJefferson 9y ago
  Policy makers do put quite a lot of work into protecting us from alcohol, tobacco and over the counter meds. Also, 1200 people is a fairly huge study, plenty to get some quality statistics from. I'm not sure why you have been so offended by this research. It looks quite convincing to me, and fairly worrying.
  - nxsynonym 9y ago
    I'm not offended. I encourage more studies to be done! 1200 is a large number of people, but not large relative to the number of people who consume regularly. What I'm railing against is "news" articles that don't contextualize or think critically about the studies that are being performed, and try to generate clicks through buzz-word filled headlines.
    - phaed 9y ago
      Recognize that this knee jerk reaction is your brain's attempt at dismissing the study and move on.
      - nxsynonym 9y ago
        It's easy to dismiss studies that have a large number of caveats and no strict way of measuring use.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > 1200 is a large number of people, but not large relative to the number of people who consume regularly. Ratio of sample to population size is mostly irrelevant for statistics. The strength of conclusions from a sample is calculated based on an infinite population size.
  - swasheck 9y ago
    I agree on your second point. 1200 people is a substantial population. However, we'd also need to read more about the details of the study to see how it was conducted and how controls were controlled and then, naturally, someone would have to reproduce the results using the same methodology. There are plenty of questions to be asked of this study, but blithely dismissing the sample size while attacking the government (and the recommendation that they do more to protect the populace) are not the first two holes to poke at this study.
shadykiller 9y ago
Very well could be true but still is less harmful than legal tobacco and alcohol
- StavrosK 9y ago
  It's pretty hard to be more harmful than alcohol, though.
  - barking 9y ago
    Tobacco, that's more harmful than alcohol.
    - StavrosK 9y ago
      Hmm, how so? I've never heard of anyone driving while under the influence of tobacco and killing a bunch of people or cheating on her husband or beating her kids.
      - barking 9y ago
        You're going off on a tangent then. You probably should have made that clear though.
        StavrosK 9y ago
        I'm going by published research: http://www.thelancet.com/cms/attachment/2001010052/2003786749/gr4_lrg.jpg http://www.thelancet.com/cms/attachment/2001010052/200378674... I don't know what you're going by.
nope_42 9y ago
Link to study?
- wdbbdw 9y ago
  https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/relationship-between-years-of-marijuana-use-and-the-four-main-diagnosticcriteria-for-metabolic-syndrome-among-united-states-adults-2155-6105-S11-017.php?aid=86076 https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/relationship-between...
- priam 9y ago
  http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2047487317723212 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2047487317723212
SN76477 9y ago
Plenty of weed users in the USA have used other drugs, live below poverty, and have other external factors. Im for legalization of marijuana so my thoughts may be biased but I an concerned that this study is bad science. Marijuana isnt legal in most places, perhaps these causes of hypertension are environmental. "For Yankey's study, information on marijuana use was merged with mortality data in 2011 from the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, and adjusted for confounding factors such as tobacco smoking and variables including sex, age and ethnicity." These studies need to be done in a place such as Portugal where marijuana has been legal for a long amount of time to allow for a large arching study to be performed properly.
- nrjdjejejdd8 9y ago
  It's not science at all. It's a suspect statistical correlation with poor controls. Aka bullshit. Anecdotal but relative to this paper equally valid, my step-dad, grandpa, and a number of their buddies all went through prostate cancer treatment and hopped on weed on the side and a decade plus later of smoking for each of them they're all within normal ranges for every thing (I check in since some of them are genetic relations and I'm nearing that age where monitoring becomes vital) Too much of this "science" fails to control for mental health. Anxiety is a common disorder in our society. Anxiety from illicit illegal drug use could be the cause here. It's a crap study, probably intended as fodder for politicians and to stoke fears in the public
docgonzo 9y ago
Interesting finding because I find it conflicts with my stereotype of the laid back stoner. Though I could see drug use leading to other stresses in life (speculation, I'm not that kind of doctor). However, I have a problem with their definition of "marijuana user" > We selected participants eligible for mortality follow-up, aged 20 years and above, who answered “yes” or “no” to the question, “Have you ever used marijuana or hashish?” Participants who answered yes were classified marijuana users and those who answered no, as non-marijuana users. Duration of marijuana use was estimated by subtracting participant’s age at marijuana use initiation from the age at the 2005 screen. from the study http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2047487317723212 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/204748731772321... it is open access
- leggomylibro 9y ago
  So according to this study, anyone who answered that they ever tried marijuana once is classified as a regular user from that point forwards? I must be misreading that.
thatgerhard 9y ago
What is this stat with alcohol use?
- cortesoft 9y ago
  Or sodas? Or sugar in general?
John_Cena 9y ago
So they write about the limitations of their study about how marijuana use is subject to the real use frequency, but they simply throw all other considerations out the window. I take issue with trials like these. They barely do any reasonable trial research and try to spin: "The persons who habitually smoke marijuana have been shown to have higher blood pressure levels when compared to the general population" -into- "Smoking marijuana in itself causes higher blood pressure" No doubt pharmaceutical companies have their hands in this, if I may say, bullshit. They stand to lose money if people have a drug that helps their symptoms that they can simply grow in the back yard. Replace "Internet of Things" with "Internet of Non-Critical Thinkers" and you get a recipe in which todays society may be influenced due to their lack of understanding of scientific principles in a world ever increasing in scientific constructs. EDIT: jetlagged english
- obsurveyor 9y ago
  > "The persons who habitually smoke marijuana have been shown to have higher blood pressure levels when compared to the general population" It's not even this, it reads as if it was a simple "Have you ever smoked marijuana?" and that's what the conclusion was drawn from. "Yankey said were limitations in the way marijuana use was assessed -- including that researchers could not be sure whether people had used the drug continuously since they first tried it." That would be like asking "Have you ever intentionally hurt someone's feelings?" and concluding that people were three times likely to be anti-social.
  - John_Cena 9y ago
    True. It is such an absurd jump of logic. Either the writer of the piece is trying to make bank (views) off of the polarizing subject matter (legal marijuana use) or someone who stands to lose bank ($$$) upset about the possibility someone can grow a remedy to their symptoms for a fraction of the price they charge over the counter.
artemisyna 9y ago
A less sensationalist report: http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2017/08/study_linking_cardiovascular_d.html http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2017/08/study_lin... Link to original study: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Barbara_Yankey/publication/315966373_Relationship_between_Years_of_Marijuana_Use_and_the_Four_Main_Diagnostic_Criteria_for_Metabolic_Syndrome_among_United_States_Adults/links/58ee60a3aca2724f0a28a55b/Relationship-between-Years-of-Marijuana-Use-and-the-Four-Main-Diagnostic-Criteria-for-Metabolic-Syndrome-among-United-States-Adults.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Barbara_Yankey/publicat...
CrankyBear 9y ago
The correlation isn't nearly as strong as the headline implies. See: http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2017/08/study_linking_cardiovascular_d.html http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2017/08/study_lin...
devrandomguy 9y ago
Could the title be updated to indicate whether we are talking about smoking, or other means of ingestion? Smoke inhalation was already known to be bad, regardless of what the smoke was made from.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  Even still, a group that eats more White Castle burgers and similar high sodium food than the rest of the population will have higher blood pressure than the rest of the population.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  And yet it seems some are saying that the idea that smoking might cause blood pressure problems is preposterous because the smoke comes from marijuana. With the 60 or so cannabinoids (http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=000636 http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.answers.php?question...) and 50 or so hydrocarbons there seems like a lot of scope for causing health issues. Especially given cannabis smoke is more carcinogenic than tobacco smoke. None of that necessarily provides a reason to ban marijuana but it may give people reason to switch to safer modes of consumption, or taking of only specific active compounds.
priam 9y ago
PDF: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2047487317723212 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2047487317723212 "95% confidence interval: 1.20–9.79"
2mur 9y ago
Repeat after me: "Correlation is not causation."
mancerayder 9y ago
A lot of it, because it's illegal, isn't grown in conditions regulated in the same way that other agricultural products are grown. Take, for example, a report from this week about pesticides in illegal growing spots in California. I can't find the Reuters link that talked about banned pesticides but I found: http://www.newsweek.com/illegal-marijuana-farms-dump-shocking-amount-toxic-waste-647568 http://www.newsweek.com/illegal-marijuana-farms-dump-shockin...) and http://www.pressherald.com/2017/08/05/pot-laced-with-pesticides-forces-states-to-act-as-epa-stays-away/ http://www.pressherald.com/2017/08/05/pot-laced-with-pestici... So the question is, do studies on cannabis harmfulness account for this variable, the unknowns and frequently illegal pesticides and other chemicals used to grow it? I suspect I know the answer...
SubiculumCode 9y ago
I believe it. Everytime my friend dabbled, his heart raced. That said, there are so many third variables that are associated with adult chronic usage (no pun intended) of marijuana that covariates may have a hard time removing their influence. What is needed is a mechanism, shown in animal and cellular models with random assignment. I haven't had the chance to read; was one proposed?
heroprotagonist 9y ago
This is a very odd article. It discusses longevity of use but gives no details about frequency or method of ingestion, which may be very telling. Example: Is there a difference between someone who smokes a joint every day for 10 years and someone who eats an edible once every two months for 10 years? I imagine the answer to this is yes, but it's one of those things you need data to back up. The 'findings' have been so oversimplified in this news article that the portrayed results are likely only unreliable. This makes for great politicized sound-bytes but doesn't really help anyone make a real conclusion or decision. This seems to be the source for the article, I doubt they even interviewed: https://www.escardio.org/The-ESC/Press-Office/Press-releases/marijuana-associated-with-three-fold-risk-of-death-from-hypertension https://www.escardio.org/The-ESC/Press-Office/Press-releases... The study: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2047487317723212 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2047487317723212 Looking at methodology: We linked participants aged 20 years and above, who responded to questions on marijuana use during the 2005 US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to data from the 2011 public-use linked mortality file of the National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only participants eligible for mortality follow-up were included. We conducted Cox proportional hazards regression analyses to estimate hazard ratios for hypertension, heart disease, and cerebrovascular mortality due to marijuana use. We controlled for cigarette smoking and other relevant variables. And results: Of the 1213 eligible participants 72.5% were presumed to be alive. The total follow-up time was 19,569 person-years. Adjusted hazard ratios for death from hypertension among marijuana users compared to non-marijuana users was 3.42 (95% confidence interval: 1.20–9.79) and for each year of marijuana use was 1.04 (95% confidence interval: 1.00–1.07). My own naive interpretation here is that they drew their conclusions from a sample of ~334 deaths (1213 - 72.5%) by people who filled out a survey in 2005, using only the original survey at the beginning of the 6 year period and their public-use mortality file..
delbel 9y ago
Hate to say it, but it could be true. I am in an area of heavy heavy marijuana use (DABs, oils, etc 250mg> THC daily) and it is not just me, other people have noticed negative health of these users. They look sick. Another diesease is that they can no longer eat and they lose weight. Apparanetly according to the doctors the stomach is unable to make the right acid to digest food. We also noticed mania, strange behavior, etc. Just everything: a little bit is fun/good, a lot is bad. It doesn't help that the proponents of medical marijuana push it as the cure for everything. Type any disease or condition into google and "medical marijuana" and you will find "evidence" that it cures that condition. The internet is full of this bad medical advice. I've actually known people that ruined their lives with just marijuana
- code_duck 9y ago
  Huh? I've lived in Oregon and Colorado and work in an industry with the higher amount of cannabis use, and there's no trend of anything like what you're saying in any of the hundreds of people that I know. I know many people who feel like cannabis has benefited their lives a great deal. Saying that cannabis use makes people unable to eat is funny, since one of the uses it's been known for and approved for for a long time, with heavy use, is helping cancer and AIDS patients eat due to appetite stimulating properties. I think you may mean a condition called hyperemesis that people think is related to heavy cannabis use, but apparently is that it's related to ingestion of a pesticide. The groups who spread anti-cannabis propaganda for decades are still quite active and are glad to seize on things Like that, and say hey, this nontoxic products that is far safer than almost any prescription drug turns out to actually be really bad for you! Right. Making concentrates can concentrate not only active ingredients but also harmful contaminants. So, that's a good reason for better regulation - especially testing of finished products for contaminants. In most areas, one still can't easily take a product to a lab or store and get it tested for contaminants due to legalities.
  - delbel 9y ago
    Not trying to invoke confirmation bias or position of authority fallacy, but I am also in the industry. Last year, I spent thousands of dollars on lab tests. We're concerned about the health of our customers. That's why this year we have not used any pesticide at all, and even harvested crops with clear thrichrome to prevent the bad paranoia feeling that happens with THC and GABA inhibitor effect. My observation is not made up, this is asking medical doctors in the area specifically what they see. We have seen drammatic health increase with the heavy heavy heavy smokers/users that quit. The light users do not have this problem. The people I am talking about spend about $60 a day in drugs and use oils,dabs,wax extracts.
tbomb 9y ago
They mention smoking it, isn't smoking ANYTHING be harmful to your cardiovascular health? What is the increased risk vs cigarettes vs cigars etc.? How does this hold up for users who smoke it vs. eat it?
- ageofwant 9y ago
  Yup, was my first impression too. Smoking tires is bad for you, smoking socks is bad for you, smoking dope is bad for you. Don't smoke. A double blind study between tire, sock and dope smokers would be more interesting than this study.
youzesix 9y ago
I hate the rationale that's implicitly being put forward in these arguments, and that underlies health care in the US. The US health system is set up under this model that assumes you're incompetent and should be prevented from making any decisions on your own, and only allowed to use something if it's deemed inconsequential enough. That is, it is assumed a person has no decision-making competency, and then the burden of proof is on someone to show that you do, or that a decision is within the realm of what someone's limited competency is. This seems completely backward: you should be assumed to be competent, and then only have that legally determined otherwise through extraordinary means. All drug regulation should be eliminated, and be replaced by a competency-based evaluation, much like if someone is dementing or cognitively incapable. That is, if someone is shown to be addicted, they should be ruled incompetent about making drug-related decisions through evaluations by psychologists and the courts, etc. Then that person would be treated as a vulnerable individual, like a child or cognitively impaired adult, and anyone taking advantage of that person would be treated similarly. The scheduling system and healthcare system is so screwed up and I don't see why this isn't discussed more. There would be so much more competition, and it is completely different from the issue of who pays: you could have the government decide what it wants to pay for, and leave people who want something different to pay for it through different means.
- mnm1 9y ago
  Great points but it's not just the health system. The nanny mindset you describe permeates all of American culture. In fact, it's inseparable. As H.L. Mencken puts it: "The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy," is the heart of American Puritan culture to this day. Nevermind that addiction is absolute hell on earth. Fear knows no nuance or facts for that matter.
darkerside 9y ago
My statistics is weak, so I apologize if this is a silly question. This study is about mortality, so the key outcome would be whether the subjects died or not. How do they know how long any dead person used marijuana (since they couldn't ask them now obviously)?
jrs95 9y ago
The only case I've ever heard of someone dying from using marijuana was my grandfather. He was diabetic and ate too many sweets after getting the munchies. Honestly, probably how he would have wanted to go out anyways.
wfo 9y ago
Remember, studies like this are not opinion pieces about whether or not it should be legal. It's a substance that it has been illegal to study for decades, it's unsurprising there may be previously unknown health risks and it's important to try and understand them. That being said, >Support for liberal marijuana use is partly due to claims that it is beneficial and possibly not harmful to health This is extremely disingenuous. No, support for liberal marijuana use is mostly due to claims that it is less harmful than current legal drugs like alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine, sugar (not that it is not harmful at all), that it has measurable and powerful medicinal uses, and that criminalization of it is the biggest US domestic-policy-based moral catastrophe in decades and has done horrific damage to entire cornerstones of American society (minority groups, the police, civil liberties, the legal system, public health) with the explicitly stated and accomplished goal of targeting political and racial groups. >If marijuana use is implicated in cardiovascular diseases and deaths, then it rests on the health community and policy makers to protect the public. No, this is disingenuous and extremely dangerous. If use is implicated in these diseases it rests on the health community and policy makers to educate the public about these risks so they may make informed choices, exactly as they do with alcohol and tobacco and caffeine and sugar and trans fats, and to insulate the public from dangers associated with others making these choices by preventing e.g. driving under the influence or secondary exposure.
darkerside 9y ago
It's confusing that the study had a breakdown of "Never", "Non-regular", and "Regular", but the results of the study don't seem to highlight whether the regular and non-regular groups had a similar or different result.
hprotagonist 9y ago
I have not read the paper. Does it attempt to segregate smokers vs. edible users? It seems kind of a no-brainer that inhaling combustion products is going to stress your cardiovascular system, so I'd be interested to see if there's also something about the physiological effects of THC/CBD/whatever-else-is-soluble-in-butter that leads to hypertension as well. edit: The study controlled for those who had previously been diagnosed with high blood pressure. But it did not take other cardiovascular risk factors into account, including diet and exercise. It also assumed that those who said they had used marijuana in 2005 continued to do so, and it assumed that users largely smoked their pot and didn't consume it in other ways, such as by eating marijuana-laced brownies. Those caveats limit the study's validity, said Dr. Vinay Prasad, associate professor of medicine at Oregon Health & Science University and an expert on the design and results of medical studies. "It does not prove that if you choose to use marijuana you are more likely to die of cardiovascular disease," Prasad said in an email. "I think the major limit of the study is that there may be unobserved differences between the people who used and admitted to using marijuana during the years of this study, and cardiovascular outcomes that the researchers did not adjust for. In fact, that is likely." Oh. Nevermind. http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2017/08/study_linking_cardiovascular_d.html http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2017/08/study_lin...
gwern 9y ago
> The results showed marijuana users had a 3.42-times higher risk of death from hypertension than non-users, and a 1.04 greater risk for each year of use. There was no link between marijuana use and dying from heart or cerebrovascular diseases such as strokes. Huh?
- ypeterholmes 9y ago
  Because the whole thing is bunk. Correlation does not mean causation.
- FeteCommuniste 9y ago
  That is weird. There are many ways to "die from hypertension," strokes and heart attacks among them. If there was no link to those outcomes, then what was the hypertension causing? Kidney disease? Cerebral hemorrhage?
wolco 9y ago
Mostly missed in the comments is that marijuana is safer than marriage.
perpetualcrayon 9y ago
Didn't read the article or the study, so take my comment with a grain of salt. My guess is the HN title should probably be: "Unmoderated ingestion of unhealthy food after smoking marijuana holds three-fold blood pressure death risk"
mnm1 9y ago
First, I don't see any actual link to an actual study. Second, even if this is true, I'm a fucking adult and can make my own decisions. It changes nothing about my support for legalization especially when shit like tobacco and alcohol are legal which we know for sure cause hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Third, from the Oregonian link below because the actual link provides little detail: "But it did not take other cardiovascular risk factors into account, including diet and exercise." Oh yes, let's ignore the most obvious causes of heart problems completely. Surely they couldn't possibly be responsible.
bubbabojangles 9y ago
Processed Foods are just as risky, although one could argue that Marijuana use increases consumption of said processed foods. Maybe the munchy side effect is the actual cause of the increased risk.
is_this_valid_ 9y ago
Are they self-selecting a vasodilatory treatment?
is_this_valid_ 9y ago
Are they self-selecting a vasodilatory (THC) and anti-inflammatory treatment (due, in part to an Omega 3 deficiency)? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasodilation#Other_mechanisms_of_vasodilation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasodilation#Other_mechanisms_...
alexandercrohde 9y ago
People are rightly criticizing this study, but for the wrong reasons. 1. There is no establishment of causality, but the article pretends there is. People who use marijuana may use it because they have high-stress lives. 2. It only applies to smokers. About 70% of the marijuana products at the dispensaries I've been to are not meant to be smoked. To quote the original article ['Recreational marijuana is primarily smoked; we hypothesize that like cigarette smoking, marijuana use will be associated with increased cardiovascular mortalities'] 3. No link to original study. [I think it's this: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2047487317723212 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2047487317723212] 4. This could be a million different things. This could be related to the stress of being afraid of being fired, or arrested. This could be tainted drugs from bad suppliers. This could be because marijuana smokers are more likely to take drugs that do change blood pressure.
sebringj 9y ago
People who are stressed out have hypertension and will look for ways to take stress away specifically using marijuana for that purpose. I wonder if that was factored in as you might have a pre-existing condition to make you more susceptible to hypertension. This type of study is questionable to me as it would be better to have a controlled double-blind study rather than manipulating data alone via questionaire.
scarface74 9y ago
Why do people constantly jump to the defensive when any study comes out saying marijuana is bad for you? Whether it is or not shouldn't be an issue. The true question is whether it matters and why should the government be meddling in what grown people decide to put in their own body.

69 points by cyanbane 9y ago

crb002 9y ago

Was it the weed or the munchies? I'd say insulin related from munchies.

frenchy 9y ago
Or sodium intake related to the munchies.
graphitezepp 9y ago
Many heavy users do not typically make the healthiest life choices, at least in my anecdata.
aphextron 9y ago
This was my guess too. There is a strong overlap between weed smokers and daily fast food eaters.

mpolichette 9y ago

This is great, it really points to the how criminalization of marijuana has been hurtful to society. People are going to continue to smoke it, legal or not, but now that its (somewhat) legal, we can learn things about how it effects the body!

cr1895 9y ago
Not quite...as it is still federally a Schedule 1 substance research is hampered.

nxsynonym 9y ago

>> "If marijuana use is implicated in cardiovascular diseases and deaths, then it rests on the health community and policy makers to protect the public." Like how the policy makers protect the public from Alcohol, tobacco, and over-the-counter meds? Also a 1200 person study isn't really enough to draw any major conclusions from. Of course ingesting anything substance of any kind frequently over a period of time is bound to be harmful to some degree. What we need is context and not one-off sensationalist studies that are used as propaganda fodder on either side of the debate.

CJefferson 9y ago
Policy makers do put quite a lot of work into protecting us from alcohol, tobacco and over the counter meds. Also, 1200 people is a fairly huge study, plenty to get some quality statistics from. I'm not sure why you have been so offended by this research. It looks quite convincing to me, and fairly worrying.
- nxsynonym 9y ago
  I'm not offended. I encourage more studies to be done! 1200 is a large number of people, but not large relative to the number of people who consume regularly. What I'm railing against is "news" articles that don't contextualize or think critically about the studies that are being performed, and try to generate clicks through buzz-word filled headlines.
  - phaed 9y ago
    Recognize that this knee jerk reaction is your brain's attempt at dismissing the study and move on.
    - nxsynonym 9y ago
      It's easy to dismiss studies that have a large number of caveats and no strict way of measuring use.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > 1200 is a large number of people, but not large relative to the number of people who consume regularly. Ratio of sample to population size is mostly irrelevant for statistics. The strength of conclusions from a sample is calculated based on an infinite population size.
- swasheck 9y ago
  I agree on your second point. 1200 people is a substantial population. However, we'd also need to read more about the details of the study to see how it was conducted and how controls were controlled and then, naturally, someone would have to reproduce the results using the same methodology. There are plenty of questions to be asked of this study, but blithely dismissing the sample size while attacking the government (and the recommendation that they do more to protect the populace) are not the first two holes to poke at this study.

shadykiller 9y ago

Very well could be true but still is less harmful than legal tobacco and alcohol

StavrosK 9y ago
It's pretty hard to be more harmful than alcohol, though.
- barking 9y ago
  Tobacco, that's more harmful than alcohol.
  - StavrosK 9y ago
    Hmm, how so? I've never heard of anyone driving while under the influence of tobacco and killing a bunch of people or cheating on her husband or beating her kids.
    - barking 9y ago
      You're going off on a tangent then. You probably should have made that clear though.
      - StavrosK 9y ago
        I'm going by published research: http://www.thelancet.com/cms/attachment/2001010052/2003786749/gr4_lrg.jpg http://www.thelancet.com/cms/attachment/2001010052/200378674... I don't know what you're going by.

nope_42 9y ago

Link to study?

wdbbdw 9y ago
https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/relationship-between-years-of-marijuana-use-and-the-four-main-diagnosticcriteria-for-metabolic-syndrome-among-united-states-adults-2155-6105-S11-017.php?aid=86076 https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/relationship-between...
priam 9y ago
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2047487317723212 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2047487317723212

SN76477 9y ago

Plenty of weed users in the USA have used other drugs, live below poverty, and have other external factors. Im for legalization of marijuana so my thoughts may be biased but I an concerned that this study is bad science. Marijuana isnt legal in most places, perhaps these causes of hypertension are environmental. "For Yankey's study, information on marijuana use was merged with mortality data in 2011 from the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, and adjusted for confounding factors such as tobacco smoking and variables including sex, age and ethnicity." These studies need to be done in a place such as Portugal where marijuana has been legal for a long amount of time to allow for a large arching study to be performed properly.

nrjdjejejdd8 9y ago
It's not science at all. It's a suspect statistical correlation with poor controls. Aka bullshit. Anecdotal but relative to this paper equally valid, my step-dad, grandpa, and a number of their buddies all went through prostate cancer treatment and hopped on weed on the side and a decade plus later of smoking for each of them they're all within normal ranges for every thing (I check in since some of them are genetic relations and I'm nearing that age where monitoring becomes vital) Too much of this "science" fails to control for mental health. Anxiety is a common disorder in our society. Anxiety from illicit illegal drug use could be the cause here. It's a crap study, probably intended as fodder for politicians and to stoke fears in the public

docgonzo 9y ago

Interesting finding because I find it conflicts with my stereotype of the laid back stoner. Though I could see drug use leading to other stresses in life (speculation, I'm not that kind of doctor). However, I have a problem with their definition of "marijuana user" > We selected participants eligible for mortality follow-up, aged 20 years and above, who answered “yes” or “no” to the question, “Have you ever used marijuana or hashish?” Participants who answered yes were classified marijuana users and those who answered no, as non-marijuana users. Duration of marijuana use was estimated by subtracting participant’s age at marijuana use initiation from the age at the 2005 screen. from the study http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2047487317723212 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/204748731772321... it is open access

leggomylibro 9y ago
So according to this study, anyone who answered that they ever tried marijuana once is classified as a regular user from that point forwards? I must be misreading that.

thatgerhard 9y ago

What is this stat with alcohol use?

cortesoft 9y ago
Or sodas? Or sugar in general?

John_Cena 9y ago

So they write about the limitations of their study about how marijuana use is subject to the real use frequency, but they simply throw all other considerations out the window. I take issue with trials like these. They barely do any reasonable trial research and try to spin: "The persons who habitually smoke marijuana have been shown to have higher blood pressure levels when compared to the general population" -into- "Smoking marijuana in itself causes higher blood pressure" No doubt pharmaceutical companies have their hands in this, if I may say, bullshit. They stand to lose money if people have a drug that helps their symptoms that they can simply grow in the back yard. Replace "Internet of Things" with "Internet of Non-Critical Thinkers" and you get a recipe in which todays society may be influenced due to their lack of understanding of scientific principles in a world ever increasing in scientific constructs. EDIT: jetlagged english

obsurveyor 9y ago
> "The persons who habitually smoke marijuana have been shown to have higher blood pressure levels when compared to the general population" It's not even this, it reads as if it was a simple "Have you ever smoked marijuana?" and that's what the conclusion was drawn from. "Yankey said were limitations in the way marijuana use was assessed -- including that researchers could not be sure whether people had used the drug continuously since they first tried it." That would be like asking "Have you ever intentionally hurt someone's feelings?" and concluding that people were three times likely to be anti-social.
- John_Cena 9y ago
  True. It is such an absurd jump of logic. Either the writer of the piece is trying to make bank (views) off of the polarizing subject matter (legal marijuana use) or someone who stands to lose bank ($$$) upset about the possibility someone can grow a remedy to their symptoms for a fraction of the price they charge over the counter.

artemisyna 9y ago

A less sensationalist report: http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2017/08/study_linking_cardiovascular_d.html http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2017/08/study_lin... Link to original study: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Barbara_Yankey/publication/315966373_Relationship_between_Years_of_Marijuana_Use_and_the_Four_Main_Diagnostic_Criteria_for_Metabolic_Syndrome_among_United_States_Adults/links/58ee60a3aca2724f0a28a55b/Relationship-between-Years-of-Marijuana-Use-and-the-Four-Main-Diagnostic-Criteria-for-Metabolic-Syndrome-among-United-States-Adults.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Barbara_Yankey/publicat...

CrankyBear 9y ago

The correlation isn't nearly as strong as the headline implies. See: http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2017/08/study_linking_cardiovascular_d.html http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2017/08/study_lin...

devrandomguy 9y ago

Could the title be updated to indicate whether we are talking about smoking, or other means of ingestion? Smoke inhalation was already known to be bad, regardless of what the smoke was made from.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago
Even still, a group that eats more White Castle burgers and similar high sodium food than the rest of the population will have higher blood pressure than the rest of the population.
pbhjpbhj 9y ago
And yet it seems some are saying that the idea that smoking might cause blood pressure problems is preposterous because the smoke comes from marijuana. With the 60 or so cannabinoids (http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=000636 http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.answers.php?question...) and 50 or so hydrocarbons there seems like a lot of scope for causing health issues. Especially given cannabis smoke is more carcinogenic than tobacco smoke. None of that necessarily provides a reason to ban marijuana but it may give people reason to switch to safer modes of consumption, or taking of only specific active compounds.

priam 9y ago

PDF: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2047487317723212 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2047487317723212 "95% confidence interval: 1.20–9.79"

2mur 9y ago

Repeat after me: "Correlation is not causation."

mancerayder 9y ago

A lot of it, because it's illegal, isn't grown in conditions regulated in the same way that other agricultural products are grown. Take, for example, a report from this week about pesticides in illegal growing spots in California. I can't find the Reuters link that talked about banned pesticides but I found: http://www.newsweek.com/illegal-marijuana-farms-dump-shocking-amount-toxic-waste-647568 http://www.newsweek.com/illegal-marijuana-farms-dump-shockin...) and http://www.pressherald.com/2017/08/05/pot-laced-with-pesticides-forces-states-to-act-as-epa-stays-away/ http://www.pressherald.com/2017/08/05/pot-laced-with-pestici... So the question is, do studies on cannabis harmfulness account for this variable, the unknowns and frequently illegal pesticides and other chemicals used to grow it? I suspect I know the answer...

SubiculumCode 9y ago

I believe it. Everytime my friend dabbled, his heart raced. That said, there are so many third variables that are associated with adult chronic usage (no pun intended) of marijuana that covariates may have a hard time removing their influence. What is needed is a mechanism, shown in animal and cellular models with random assignment. I haven't had the chance to read; was one proposed?

heroprotagonist 9y ago

This is a very odd article. It discusses longevity of use but gives no details about frequency or method of ingestion, which may be very telling. Example: Is there a difference between someone who smokes a joint every day for 10 years and someone who eats an edible once every two months for 10 years? I imagine the answer to this is yes, but it's one of those things you need data to back up. The 'findings' have been so oversimplified in this news article that the portrayed results are likely only unreliable. This makes for great politicized sound-bytes but doesn't really help anyone make a real conclusion or decision. This seems to be the source for the article, I doubt they even interviewed: https://www.escardio.org/The-ESC/Press-Office/Press-releases/marijuana-associated-with-three-fold-risk-of-death-from-hypertension https://www.escardio.org/The-ESC/Press-Office/Press-releases... The study: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2047487317723212 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2047487317723212 Looking at methodology: We linked participants aged 20 years and above, who responded to questions on marijuana use during the 2005 US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to data from the 2011 public-use linked mortality file of the National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only participants eligible for mortality follow-up were included. We conducted Cox proportional hazards regression analyses to estimate hazard ratios for hypertension, heart disease, and cerebrovascular mortality due to marijuana use. We controlled for cigarette smoking and other relevant variables. And results: Of the 1213 eligible participants 72.5% were presumed to be alive. The total follow-up time was 19,569 person-years. Adjusted hazard ratios for death from hypertension among marijuana users compared to non-marijuana users was 3.42 (95% confidence interval: 1.20–9.79) and for each year of marijuana use was 1.04 (95% confidence interval: 1.00–1.07). My own naive interpretation here is that they drew their conclusions from a sample of ~334 deaths (1213 - 72.5%) by people who filled out a survey in 2005, using only the original survey at the beginning of the 6 year period and their public-use mortality file..

delbel 9y ago

Hate to say it, but it could be true. I am in an area of heavy heavy marijuana use (DABs, oils, etc 250mg> THC daily) and it is not just me, other people have noticed negative health of these users. They look sick. Another diesease is that they can no longer eat and they lose weight. Apparanetly according to the doctors the stomach is unable to make the right acid to digest food. We also noticed mania, strange behavior, etc. Just everything: a little bit is fun/good, a lot is bad. It doesn't help that the proponents of medical marijuana push it as the cure for everything. Type any disease or condition into google and "medical marijuana" and you will find "evidence" that it cures that condition. The internet is full of this bad medical advice. I've actually known people that ruined their lives with just marijuana

code_duck 9y ago
Huh? I've lived in Oregon and Colorado and work in an industry with the higher amount of cannabis use, and there's no trend of anything like what you're saying in any of the hundreds of people that I know. I know many people who feel like cannabis has benefited their lives a great deal. Saying that cannabis use makes people unable to eat is funny, since one of the uses it's been known for and approved for for a long time, with heavy use, is helping cancer and AIDS patients eat due to appetite stimulating properties. I think you may mean a condition called hyperemesis that people think is related to heavy cannabis use, but apparently is that it's related to ingestion of a pesticide. The groups who spread anti-cannabis propaganda for decades are still quite active and are glad to seize on things Like that, and say hey, this nontoxic products that is far safer than almost any prescription drug turns out to actually be really bad for you! Right. Making concentrates can concentrate not only active ingredients but also harmful contaminants. So, that's a good reason for better regulation - especially testing of finished products for contaminants. In most areas, one still can't easily take a product to a lab or store and get it tested for contaminants due to legalities.
- delbel 9y ago
  Not trying to invoke confirmation bias or position of authority fallacy, but I am also in the industry. Last year, I spent thousands of dollars on lab tests. We're concerned about the health of our customers. That's why this year we have not used any pesticide at all, and even harvested crops with clear thrichrome to prevent the bad paranoia feeling that happens with THC and GABA inhibitor effect. My observation is not made up, this is asking medical doctors in the area specifically what they see. We have seen drammatic health increase with the heavy heavy heavy smokers/users that quit. The light users do not have this problem. The people I am talking about spend about $60 a day in drugs and use oils,dabs,wax extracts.

tbomb 9y ago

They mention smoking it, isn't smoking ANYTHING be harmful to your cardiovascular health? What is the increased risk vs cigarettes vs cigars etc.? How does this hold up for users who smoke it vs. eat it?

ageofwant 9y ago
Yup, was my first impression too. Smoking tires is bad for you, smoking socks is bad for you, smoking dope is bad for you. Don't smoke. A double blind study between tire, sock and dope smokers would be more interesting than this study.

youzesix 9y ago

I hate the rationale that's implicitly being put forward in these arguments, and that underlies health care in the US. The US health system is set up under this model that assumes you're incompetent and should be prevented from making any decisions on your own, and only allowed to use something if it's deemed inconsequential enough. That is, it is assumed a person has no decision-making competency, and then the burden of proof is on someone to show that you do, or that a decision is within the realm of what someone's limited competency is. This seems completely backward: you should be assumed to be competent, and then only have that legally determined otherwise through extraordinary means. All drug regulation should be eliminated, and be replaced by a competency-based evaluation, much like if someone is dementing or cognitively incapable. That is, if someone is shown to be addicted, they should be ruled incompetent about making drug-related decisions through evaluations by psychologists and the courts, etc. Then that person would be treated as a vulnerable individual, like a child or cognitively impaired adult, and anyone taking advantage of that person would be treated similarly. The scheduling system and healthcare system is so screwed up and I don't see why this isn't discussed more. There would be so much more competition, and it is completely different from the issue of who pays: you could have the government decide what it wants to pay for, and leave people who want something different to pay for it through different means.

mnm1 9y ago
Great points but it's not just the health system. The nanny mindset you describe permeates all of American culture. In fact, it's inseparable. As H.L. Mencken puts it: "The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy," is the heart of American Puritan culture to this day. Nevermind that addiction is absolute hell on earth. Fear knows no nuance or facts for that matter.

darkerside 9y ago

My statistics is weak, so I apologize if this is a silly question. This study is about mortality, so the key outcome would be whether the subjects died or not. How do they know how long any dead person used marijuana (since they couldn't ask them now obviously)?

jrs95 9y ago

The only case I've ever heard of someone dying from using marijuana was my grandfather. He was diabetic and ate too many sweets after getting the munchies. Honestly, probably how he would have wanted to go out anyways.

wfo 9y ago

Remember, studies like this are not opinion pieces about whether or not it should be legal. It's a substance that it has been illegal to study for decades, it's unsurprising there may be previously unknown health risks and it's important to try and understand them. That being said, >Support for liberal marijuana use is partly due to claims that it is beneficial and possibly not harmful to health This is extremely disingenuous. No, support for liberal marijuana use is mostly due to claims that it is less harmful than current legal drugs like alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine, sugar (not that it is not harmful at all), that it has measurable and powerful medicinal uses, and that criminalization of it is the biggest US domestic-policy-based moral catastrophe in decades and has done horrific damage to entire cornerstones of American society (minority groups, the police, civil liberties, the legal system, public health) with the explicitly stated and accomplished goal of targeting political and racial groups. >If marijuana use is implicated in cardiovascular diseases and deaths, then it rests on the health community and policy makers to protect the public. No, this is disingenuous and extremely dangerous. If use is implicated in these diseases it rests on the health community and policy makers to educate the public about these risks so they may make informed choices, exactly as they do with alcohol and tobacco and caffeine and sugar and trans fats, and to insulate the public from dangers associated with others making these choices by preventing e.g. driving under the influence or secondary exposure.

darkerside 9y ago

It's confusing that the study had a breakdown of "Never", "Non-regular", and "Regular", but the results of the study don't seem to highlight whether the regular and non-regular groups had a similar or different result.

hprotagonist 9y ago

I have not read the paper. Does it attempt to segregate smokers vs. edible users? It seems kind of a no-brainer that inhaling combustion products is going to stress your cardiovascular system, so I'd be interested to see if there's also something about the physiological effects of THC/CBD/whatever-else-is-soluble-in-butter that leads to hypertension as well. edit: The study controlled for those who had previously been diagnosed with high blood pressure. But it did not take other cardiovascular risk factors into account, including diet and exercise. It also assumed that those who said they had used marijuana in 2005 continued to do so, and it assumed that users largely smoked their pot and didn't consume it in other ways, such as by eating marijuana-laced brownies. Those caveats limit the study's validity, said Dr. Vinay Prasad, associate professor of medicine at Oregon Health & Science University and an expert on the design and results of medical studies. "It does not prove that if you choose to use marijuana you are more likely to die of cardiovascular disease," Prasad said in an email. "I think the major limit of the study is that there may be unobserved differences between the people who used and admitted to using marijuana during the years of this study, and cardiovascular outcomes that the researchers did not adjust for. In fact, that is likely." Oh. Nevermind. http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2017/08/study_linking_cardiovascular_d.html http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2017/08/study_lin...

gwern 9y ago

> The results showed marijuana users had a 3.42-times higher risk of death from hypertension than non-users, and a 1.04 greater risk for each year of use. There was no link between marijuana use and dying from heart or cerebrovascular diseases such as strokes. Huh?

ypeterholmes 9y ago
Because the whole thing is bunk. Correlation does not mean causation.
FeteCommuniste 9y ago
That is weird. There are many ways to "die from hypertension," strokes and heart attacks among them. If there was no link to those outcomes, then what was the hypertension causing? Kidney disease? Cerebral hemorrhage?

wolco 9y ago

Mostly missed in the comments is that marijuana is safer than marriage.

perpetualcrayon 9y ago

Didn't read the article or the study, so take my comment with a grain of salt. My guess is the HN title should probably be: "Unmoderated ingestion of unhealthy food after smoking marijuana holds three-fold blood pressure death risk"

mnm1 9y ago

First, I don't see any actual link to an actual study. Second, even if this is true, I'm a fucking adult and can make my own decisions. It changes nothing about my support for legalization especially when shit like tobacco and alcohol are legal which we know for sure cause hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Third, from the Oregonian link below because the actual link provides little detail: "But it did not take other cardiovascular risk factors into account, including diet and exercise." Oh yes, let's ignore the most obvious causes of heart problems completely. Surely they couldn't possibly be responsible.

bubbabojangles 9y ago

Processed Foods are just as risky, although one could argue that Marijuana use increases consumption of said processed foods. Maybe the munchy side effect is the actual cause of the increased risk.

is_this_valid_ 9y ago

Are they self-selecting a vasodilatory treatment?

is_this_valid_ 9y ago

Are they self-selecting a vasodilatory (THC) and anti-inflammatory treatment (due, in part to an Omega 3 deficiency)? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasodilation#Other_mechanisms_of_vasodilation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasodilation#Other_mechanisms_...

alexandercrohde 9y ago

People are rightly criticizing this study, but for the wrong reasons. 1. There is no establishment of causality, but the article pretends there is. People who use marijuana may use it because they have high-stress lives. 2. It only applies to smokers. About 70% of the marijuana products at the dispensaries I've been to are not meant to be smoked. To quote the original article ['Recreational marijuana is primarily smoked; we hypothesize that like cigarette smoking, marijuana use will be associated with increased cardiovascular mortalities'] 3. No link to original study. [I think it's this: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2047487317723212 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2047487317723212] 4. This could be a million different things. This could be related to the stress of being afraid of being fired, or arrested. This could be tainted drugs from bad suppliers. This could be because marijuana smokers are more likely to take drugs that do change blood pressure.

sebringj 9y ago

People who are stressed out have hypertension and will look for ways to take stress away specifically using marijuana for that purpose. I wonder if that was factored in as you might have a pre-existing condition to make you more susceptible to hypertension. This type of study is questionable to me as it would be better to have a controlled double-blind study rather than manipulating data alone via questionaire.

scarface74 9y ago

Why do people constantly jump to the defensive when any study comes out saying marijuana is bad for you? Whether it is or not shouldn't be an issue. The true question is whether it matters and why should the government be meddling in what grown people decide to put in their own body.