Marijuana is associated with higher risk of heart attack and stroke | Hacker News Reader

Marijuana is associated with higher risk of heart attack and stroke

nytimes.com

26 pointspaulpauper18 comments

If you read the actual paper, and it's very easy to skim through, the authors offer a lot of reasons to doubt the results, from strong bias in the data to repeated samples across studies. That being said, it is nice to start getting some better data about marijuana use.

I’m not as shocked by this as I am that there’s the possibility that most of the health-related headlines that I’ve seen lately about things affecting young people may have been referring to people who were in their mid-to-late thirties.

As a young man in his own right for that matter, I’m starting to wonder how other people my age with these sort of problems perceive themselves health-wise as far as diet, fitness and lifestyle go.

How much higher risk are we talking compared to e.g. experiencing stress daily, or using nicotine products?

Intuitively these effects would not be related to THC, but instead cannabigerol (CBG), which is known to have adrenergic effects.

Friendly reminder that smoking weed is inefficient (because burned THC is inactive) and unhealthy (because breathing in smoke is ... yes, unhealthy).

Vaporization is the way to go nowadays. Important consideration: "vapes" (those devices with mystery fluids containing nicotine) are something totally different. Vaporization (of dry herbs or hash) is a controlled heat up to temps around 200°C where nothing burns but the oils containing the cannabinoids (primarily THC and CBD) evaporate.

Most vaporizers are electrical - I personally prefer devices that are heated with a torch lighter until a bi-metal deforms and produces an audible click (VapMan Click, DynaVap devices et al.).

Thank you for your attention.

(Germany finally came to senses and semi-legalized Cannabis. The time leading up to this political milestone putting reason before ideology for a change was marked by a non-stop barrage of unfounded arguments where smoking a joint was consistently presented as the only method to consume weed. That's why I'm a little sensitive to this subject. Another benefit of vaporizers is that they cause practically no smell at all.)

https://archive.ph/TrxxW

https://heart.bmj.com/content/early/2025/06/10/heartjnl-2024...

I would assume stress would contribute a lot more to heart attack and stroke, thus why I smoke weed.

Yet another study that doesn’t distinguish between smoking and other forms of using weed.

_Smoking_ literally anything is clearly going to harm your health.

Whatever the statistics may be with this. I'm not a marijuana partaker but I'll say this: the #1 killer in this life is stress. I feel there's too many factors at play for data like this. Is it from the coughing, how does that weigh in on it? Is it from the binge eating? is it from the lack of mobility?

I read the articles before NY Times picked them up; it's paywalled.

> Is it from the coughing, how does that weigh in on it? Is it from the binge eating? is it from the lack of mobility?

THC is hypothesized to have direct effects on the vascular system that might lead to CVD, so none of these.

Paywalled, can't see. But if it's empirical, a positive correlation on top of a negative one, would be undistinguishable from no correlation. This in fact may be very common, but the bottom line is what the sum of the effects is rather than the individual forces.

Suppose the same can be said for alcohol and relaxation, if we see evidence of more heart attacks, it means the negative effect is bigger than the (hypothetical) positive.

more than the covid jab?

If smoked, not surprising. Another typed of smoked leaf (tobacco) has this association too.

If this is the study I'm familiar with, the results were found not to be dependent on route of administration. Those who ate edibles had cardiovascular effects, too.

The same study did find that smoked marijuana induces the same changes in blood that smoking cigarettes do, and those changes lead to CVD, cancers, etc in tobacco smokers.

edit: This is what I'm thinking of: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40434782/

also it's often mixed with tobacco when smoking it.. so maybe it's just the tobacco -.^

The linked study controls for this.

Most of the time, if you read the headline for a study, and instantly have a thought that would make the entire study's results pointless, it's very very probable the study authors had that thought too and mitigated it. It's their job.

Depends on who they are working for.

The leaves aren't smoked. Its the female flowers.

because junk food

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