
Marijuana use holds three-fold blood pressure death risk: study - cyanbane
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-marijuana-hypertension-idUSKBN1AP0JS
======
John_Cena
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
> "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
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.

------
SN76477
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.

------
artemisyna
A less sensationalist report:
[http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2017/08/study_lin...](http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2017/08/study_linking_cardiovascular_d.html)

Link to original study:
[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Barbara_Yankey/publicat...](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)

------
mpolichette
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
Not quite...as it is still federally a Schedule 1 substance research is
hampered.

------
alexandercrohde
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.

------
mancerayder
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-
shockin...](http://www.newsweek.com/illegal-marijuana-farms-dump-shocking-
amount-toxic-waste-647568))

and

[http://www.pressherald.com/2017/08/05/pot-laced-with-
pestici...](http://www.pressherald.com/2017/08/05/pot-laced-with-pesticides-
forces-states-to-act-as-epa-stays-away/)

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...

------
heroprotagonist
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...](https://www.escardio.org/The-ESC/Press-Office/Press-
releases/marijuana-associated-with-three-fold-risk-of-death-from-hypertension)

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..

------
youzesix
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
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.

------
wfo
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.

------
hprotagonist
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_lin...](http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2017/08/study_linking_cardiovascular_d.html)

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

------
docgonzo
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/10.1177/204748731772321...](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2047487317723212)
it is open access

~~~
leggomylibro
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.

------
delbel
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
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
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.

------
darkerside
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)?

------
gwern
> 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?

~~~
FeteCommuniste
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?

------
tbomb
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
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.

------
bubbabojangles
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.

------
devrandomguy
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.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
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?question...](http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=000636))
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.

------
sebringj
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.

------
nxsynonym
>> "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
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.

~~~
millzlane
>It looks quite convincing to me, and fairly worrying.

That's how propaganda works.

I know it's anecdotal, but I've been a 3 or more times a day (everyday) smoker
for over 11.5 years and I'm an no where near the risk of my overweight family
members. Blood pressure has been fine and I'm an no risk of hypertension.
Demand more proof if you're convinced by this. Something smells fishy. I would
like to know how Snoop, Willie, and Morgan are holding up. They must be ready
to keel over with how they smoke.

~~~
moxious
Hold on now, picking individual celebrity examples has some serious
survivorship bias on its own. We don't hear from the ones who did experience
early mortality.

Cannabis is a hard topic for Americans to talk about, because it's been so
often unfairly demonized in the past, there's a pro-cannabis camp that
sometimes won't admit any downside to it, fearing "Reefer Madness" style FUD
which has been very common for decades.

But is it really all that surprising that smoking could be bad for your
health, irrespective of what it is? My take would be that people shouldn't be
persecuted for this, but that it's straightforwardly obvious that any smoking
(and doubly so an unregulated plant that would reasonably be expected to vary
tremendously in quality depending on supplier) -- would be harmful.

~~~
mobilemidget
and don't rule out all the people that can't publicly state they use
marihuana; because of law, etc etc.

~~~
neveradmitmyid
Exactly. As a member of our security apparatus I can never reveal my daily use
since age of 14. That was 35 years ago, and I am still the same serious
athlete I always was, just a calmer one than when I can't smoke pot. From my
anecdotal perspective, its the junk food and sitting around culture making
people sick.

------
is_this_valid_
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_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasodilation#Other_mechanisms_of_vasodilation)

------
scarface74
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.

------
darkerside
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.

------
jrs95
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.

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

~~~
StavrosK
It's pretty hard to be more harmful than alcohol, though.

~~~
barking
Tobacco, that's more harmful than alcohol.

~~~
StavrosK
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
You're going off on a tangent then.

You probably should have made that clear though.

~~~
StavrosK
I'm going by published research:
[http://www.thelancet.com/cms/attachment/2001010052/200378674...](http://www.thelancet.com/cms/attachment/2001010052/2003786749/gr4_lrg.jpg)

I don't know what you're going by.

------
perpetualcrayon
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"

------
crb002
Was it the weed or the munchies? I'd say insulin related from munchies.

~~~
aphextron
This was my guess too. There is a strong overlap between weed smokers and
daily fast food eaters.

------
mnm1
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.

------
SubiculumCode
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?

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

------
is_this_valid_
Are they self-selecting a vasodilatory treatment?

------
2mur
Repeat after me:

"Correlation is not causation."

------
nope_42
Link to study?

~~~
wdbbdw
[https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/relationship-
between...](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)

------
thatgerhard
What is this stat with alcohol use?

~~~
cortesoft
Or sodas? Or sugar in general?

