The most adverse (proven) effects of Cannabis are:
* Frequent bronchitis (for people that smoke it)
* Risk of vehicle crashes
* Low pregnancy weight, preterm birth, NICU
* Mental health (associated risk of schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, Cannabis use disorder)
* Impaired learning, memory, attention
* Drug-drug interaction (mostly for CBD - liver toxicity)
That’s the complete slide. Not once in the whole lecture were heart rate issues mentioned or asked about by the attendees.
As you can see, there are plenty of adverse effects, but heart-related issues are not one of the main concerns.
Do you have any sources for the research you mention and how concerning it is?
>Mental health (associated risk of schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, Cannabis use disorder)
Small but >1 ORs for a rare disorder like schizophrenia (base rate ~0.02%) sound scarier than they really are. Many recreational activities are associated with a similar increase in the risk of concussion (base rate ~1%), and yet they are actually recommended for general health. Correlation of recreational drug use with depression/anxiety has a causal direction problem.
Others in this thread have linked studies about the effects on the heart. It remains to be seen what the long-term risk profile is.
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/04/marijuana-hea....
https://www.heart.org/en/news/2021/11/08/cannabis-use-disord...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabinoid_hyperemesis_syndro...
Aryana A, Williams MA. Marijuana as trigger of cardiovascular events: speculation or scientific certainty? Int J Cardiol 2007;118:141-4. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcard.2006.08.001
Bachs L, Morland H. Acute cardiovascular fatalities following cannabis use. Forensic Sci Int 2001;124:200-3.
Cappelli F, Lazzeri C, Gensini GF, Valente S. Cannabis: a trigger for acute myocardial infarction? A case report. J Cardiovasc Med 2008;9:725-728.
Jones RT. Cardiovascular system effects of marijuana. J Clin Pharmacol 2002; 42(11 Suppl.):58S-63.
Sidney S. Cardiovascular consequences of marijuana use. J Clin Pharmacol 2002;42(11 Suppl.):64S-70S. (Found no association.)
Tormey WP. Royal College of Pathologists’ autopsy guidelines on sudden cardiac death: roles for cannabis, cotinine, NSAIDs and psychology. J Clin Pathol 2012;65:187-188.
so there's a starting place to look into it.
maybe the intervening 9 years have demonstrated that it isn't an issue.
Yep breathing combustion products is pretty bad for you.
> Risk of vehicle crashes
I'm not aware of any proponents of driving while high.
> Low pregnancy weight, preterm birth, NICU
Again, who's advocating for pregnant women to consume cannabis?
> Mental health (associated risk of schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, Cannabis use disorder)
I think this is only for those already genetically predisposed to developing schizophrenia.
> Impaired learning, memory, attention
I'm not sure anyone thinks you should smoke a bunch of drugs before studying for finals.
Just for an ounce of perspective here.
> Again, who's advocating for pregnant women to consume cannabis?
I thought the comment was making clear what was considered a risk, not what is being advocated? People certainly do drive while under the effects of cannabis, I've known a few. I don't know anyone who consumed it while pregnant but I'm sure they do exist.
> I'm not sure anyone thinks you should smoke a bunch of drugs before studying for finals.
Again, I know people who've done this.
Can you please tell me why you think heart rate is more concerning than the psychological effects? Effects which the paper itself mentions and you seem to downplay for some unobvious reason to me.
For me, the difficulty is discerning causation from correlation. Anecdotally I know plenty of cannabis users, and many of them have obvious mental issues. I am interested in knowing the root cause of mental issues, because then we are given the opportunity to affect behaviours to improve people’s lives. A correlation is often little help to anyone but other researchers.
I didn’t read the paper but the abstract didn’t allude to any insight into causation versus correlation. If an abstract of a paper ignores that issue, then I often don’t bother reading, because there is not enough value from studies measuring correlation (for my personal use for any information).
If there’s a causal link, I wonder in which direction is more common? I know kids from my neighborhood who now smoke a lot of weed. I think most of them had issues long before trying weed and weed was more of an escape for them, much like booze is for many.
Do they have actual, diagnosed "mental issues", or are you judging that some of their behavior is out of the norm for your experience and thus it must be a mental issue?
Yes, I have acquaintances and friends with no psychological problems that smoke weed. Also the same but don’t smoke.
Yes, I have acquaintances and friends with “undiagnosed” psychological problems that smoke weed. Also the same but don’t smoke.
No, I am not a professional psychological specialist.
Yes, I have some experiences to be able to make intelligent “non-professional” judgements about psychological problems. My definition of a psychological problem is one where the problem is seriously negatively affecting ones life, and ones skills are not successfully mitigating or correcting the problem. Environmental issues have a part to play in that. My friends and acquaintances have a wide range of ages.
You seem to be fishing for something - perhaps you could have just made your point instead (with caveats).
Disclaimer: I don’t use any form of THC or CBD. No strong reasons against it, just not my thing. I certainly have nothing against those that want or need to take THC or CBD.
By the way, labeling an undesirable group with "mental issues" has been done many times in the past, sometimes even with "good" intentions.
A well-designed study may be more revealing, but the individual experiences are legitimate and should not be discarded solely because studies are possible.
A strong enough signal will show in a sample of one.
With a correct model, cause and effect can be predicted without any samples (scientific progress often occurs this way).
And some people’s intuitions are remarkably astute. Albeit there are a lot of people who have incorrect intuitions and don’t know it.
A cannabis example would be strong paranoia after one sesh. More ingrained paranoia (qanon?) that I have seen linked to regular heavy usage doesn’t feel to me to be a stretch of the imagination.
More likely, they probably can't wade thru the noise to find it - search cannabis and health and be prepared to search thru hundreds, if not ten's of thousands of pages of propaganda claiming that it is nothing but good for almost any health condition you have - real or imagined.
https://jmedicalcasereports.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11... (Edit: graphic images warning)
If you search PubMed, you will find case reports of other similar incidents. Now, no denying this is an extremely rare adverse effect, but still a quite frightening one. (Also worth stating, many of these reported cases of cannabis-induced psychotic penile self-amputation involve no known history of gender dysphoria.)
In the case you link the guy had smoked weed for two years prior with no apparent issues. Yes his psychosis resolved after he stopped using cannabis, but he was also treated from that point onward with anti-psychotics (the kind you would treat schizophrenia with). It was probably the anti-psychotics, not the cannabis cessation that made him not psychotic.
Bottom line is there is no way for any individual to really know if they have latent schizophrenia anyway, and I think it’s a conveniently non-disprovable explanation for why psychedelics and cannabis aren’t bad.
In this specific case, the authors started him on a treatment for schizophrenia and he got better. Why continue him on this treatment if they thought it was simply the cannabis that caused it (as he would abstain from then on). Also, they increased his dose prior to discharge.
I'm not arguing that cannabis didn't cause his schizophrenia, just that this doesn't sound like cannabis induced psychosis, which is a different diagnosis with different prognosis.
I do think some people can have that "latent" potential yet have the good fortune of never activating it – and cannabis definitely has the potential to do so (although most recreational drugs probably can given sufficiently heavy long-term use).
(I tried cannabis once, years ago, I could see why people like it but I didn't feel any great urge to repeat the experience – and worries like this also discourage me – which is probably for the best.)
See this paper – Veeder TA, Leo RJ. Male genital self-mutilation: a systematic review of psychiatric disorders and psychosocial factors. Gen Hosp Psychiatry. 2017 Jan-Feb;44:43-50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.genhosppsych.2016.09.003 Epub 2016 Sep 14. PMID: 28041576.
To quote its abstract:
> Data were obtained from 173 cases: genital mutilation (n=21), penile amputation (n=62), castration (n=56) and combined amputation/castration (n=34). Common psychiatric disorders included schizophrenia spectrum (49%), substance use (18.5%), personality (15.9%) and gender dysphoric disorders (15.3%)
So, while it is almost 50% schizophrenia spectrum, substance use is the second most common cause (although personality disorders and gender dysphoria are not far behind, and the difference between the three might not be statistically significant.)
Also, my mother is a doctor, and when I was a teenager (even tweenager) I used to love to read her medical journals and textbooks–it has made me rather immune to the unsightly images they sometimes contain–although, interestingly, images which I can view nonchalantly in a medical context will still freak me out if divorced from that context.
Every weed smoker I know is a drunk and when I used to smoke I drank along with it every single time.
Quite a bit of research is available on the effects of cannabis use — the problem is that people don't read it.