The authors of a new study are warning about the potential dangers of cannabis use. The study, which was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, found that people who use cannabis are twice as likely to have a heart attack than adults who do not. They pointed out that the risk is basically the same, no matter how the cannabis is consumed.
The researchers analyzed the health data of 33,000 adults between the ages of 18 to 44 and found that 17% of adults reported using cannabis within the previous month. Of those people, 1.3% suffered a heart attack, while only 0.8% of non-cannabis users reporting having a heart attack.
They found that the more people use cannabis, the higher the risk of having a heart attack.
"Beyond the main finding that heart attacks were found to be more common in cannabis users, what we did find is that the more people use, the higher the risk," said Karim Ladha, a clinician at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto and co-author of the study.
"There's increasing evidence that this could potentially be harmful to you, both in the short term and the long term," he said.
While cannabis is legal in many states, both for recreational and medical use, many health experts point out that the strains available today are much more potent than they were in the past.
"This isn't what your granddaddy used to smoke at Woodstock; this is highly potent," Robert Page, chair of the American Heart Association, told CNN.