A study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association and funded by the National Institutes of Health found that those who smoke weed daily are at a significantly higher risk of suffering heart attack and stroke than those who don’t.
“We know that toxins are released when cannabis is burned, similar to those found in tobacco smoke,” said Abra Jeffers, a data analyst at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and former researcher at the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco, where the study was based.
“We’ve known for a long time that smoking tobacco is linked to heart disease, and this study is evidence that smoking cannabis appears to also be a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, which is the leading cause of death in the United States,” Jeffers’ statement continued. “Cannabis use could be an important, underappreciated source of heart disease.”
Researchers analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 434,104 American adults aged 18 to 74 between 2016 and 2020. About 4% were daily cannabis users, 7% used the drug about five days a month and 88.9% had not used any marijuana in the past 30 days.