Well, there they go again. Another media portrays risks from cannabis, this time to scare people about their heart health. We are singularly unimpressed because, most importantly, this particular report didn’t actually examine anybody’s heart, it relied on people talking about their hearts.
We can’t say there’s nothing to its media-grabbing claim, just that its data is meaningless. When you look at things backwards, you get a backward perspective. For example, if you look forward at people who smoke marijuana you don’t see a higher rate of heart disease: You see greater longevity in part because cannabis reduces stress.
But if you instead look backward at people who went to a doctor because they were worried about heart disease, you find that a higher percentage of them smoke marijuana. That’s understandable, because cannabis speeds up the heartbeat and even legalization advocates urge caution for people with heart conditions or risk of stroke.
Scaring up funds with skewed data
So here comes a report claiming that self-reported marijuana consumers, in all its forms, express concern that it may be affecting their heart health. Scary, right? Not really. It’s completely reasonable for cannabis neophytes to think about about their health, after 100 years of Reefer Madness scare tactics like this by politicians, news media and “researchers.”
We use quotes because many of these “researchers” fail to follow scientific protocols, they merely pick out a topic related to their areas of focus, fish around for a statistical corollary and label it as ‘proof’ or at least “risk.” They then use their skewed data to bring in more research dollars.
This new report is egregiously designed to stir controversy and create an echo-chamber effect. After hearing its claim, even more cannabis consumers will talk to their doctors about cannabis and its effect on their heart. This artifice then exaggerates the central premise: People are concerned about how cannabis affects their hearts.
Suspiciously, it comes shortly after a report by federal Health and Human Services showing that cannabis is relatively safe for consumers. It’s almost like the new claim was politically timed to sow confusion and raise new fears.
No measured data used to support claim
Of course people are concerned about their health, especially after they see headlines like this. If you read the story, note that the report relies on “self‐reported cardiovascular outcomes.” The fundamental deception is using “self-reports,” not clinical measurement of actual heart health. There were no baselines taken, no physical checkups given, no factoring of congeners that affect people’ hearts and no effort to verify any of the claims, let alone establish causality.
On the other hand, we do know that people who smoke too much weed may become paranoid about its effects and, especially if they overdose on edibles, they feel like they might be having a heart attack and run to the doctor — who tells them to relax, they just consumed too much THC.
Next, the researchers added up three different risk factors to come up with a cumulative risk factor, even though there is overlap among the subcategories of people who report the symptoms. That alone could negatively skew the results by a factor of three!
Conflating nicotine effect with cannabis
And then there is this line, from the article link. “Cannabis smoke is not all that different from tobacco smoke, except for the psychoactive drug: THC versus nicotine.” That is tantamount to saying, “the only difference between semen in a healthy man and a man with a vasectomy is the presence of sperm.” To a woman who does or does not want to become pregnant, sperm makes a big difference.
The authors fail to note that it’s a vast difference: nicotine causes cancer and THC inhibits it. Likewise carcinogenic nicotine v therapeutic THC. They also selectively neglect to mention that nicotine is also a psychoactive drug. The distinction is that cannabis is psychotropic. That kind of sloppy and prejudicial language makes it difficult to take the new claims seriously.
Is there some extra risk from marijuana for people with heart and stroke issues? Maybe, in fact, probably — at least to a minor extent. However, fanning the flames of hysteria with “junk science” and is not the way to find the answer to that question. It’s just another way of perpetuating paranoia, fear and more Reefer Madness.
Boy who cried wolf
The problem is that news media are so quick to jump onto anything that stokes fear about cannabis that it is difficult for consumers, the public and bureaucrats to know which, if any, concerns are real and which are confabulated.
Like the fabled “Boy who cried wolf,” the researchers looking for fame and fortune and media who fail to curate the claims they publish are in dire risk that, should anything seriously problematic arise with cannabis, society will be bored by their Reefer Madness and fail to take note of any real risks.