Cannabis Causes Cardiovascular Apocalypse… Maybe.

Recently the folks over at Fox News (you know, that bastion of journalistic integrity) dropped a story with the following headline: “Marijuana use may lead to heart complications, death, study says” and the internet/twittersphere whipped itself into the expected flurry of chortling. Some voices cried BS, while the anti-pot movement got so excited that they grabbed a jar of mayo and locked the bedroom door.

Headlines have a purpose. A headline’s job (especially in our modern, ad-driven revenue model that the web has embraced) is to get your attention so you will click the link and be exposed to the advertisements. Well, this headline did its job on me.

I am, of course, a strong supporter of cannabis. But that doesn’t mean I have the right to bury my head in the sand when/if some evidence surfaces that is damning to marijuana. In that spirit, I explored the article with an open mind and a willingness to have my position changed, should the evidence prove accurate and compelling.

Upon first reading the Fox News piece, my immediate thought was that it was a bit of a leap to connect a headline of that ilk to the data they presented, which was scant.

The data from which the headline was generated: “Using 2006-2010 data from the French Addictovigilance Network, researchers identified 35 cases of cardiovascular and vascular conditions related to the heart, brain and limbs that occurred after marijuana use. They found that most patients were male, with an average age of 34.3 years. The cases, representing 2 percent of marijuana-related complications, included 20 heart attacks and nine patient deaths.”

Even in a world where this kind of skewed “science” is seen as accurate, that’s still only a 2 percent rate of cardiovascular complication among marijuana-related cases. Considering that the same article points out that France has an estimated 1.2 million regular pot smokers, their numbers are even more watery.

“The general public thinks marijuana is harmless, but information revealing the potential health dangers of marijuana use needs to be disseminated to the public, policymakers and healthcare providers,” claims study author Émilie Jouanjus, medical faculty at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire in Toulouse, France…there is now compelling evidence on the growing risk of marijuana-associated adverse cardiovascular effects, especially in young people…it is therefore important that doctors, including cardiologists, be aware of this, and consider marijuana use as one of the potential causes in patients with cardiovascular disorders.”

Seems to me claiming that marijuana installs a cardiovascular problem in an otherwise healthy person is a stretch. If you’ve already got a cardiovascular complication and you use cannabis, I still don’t think you’re in too much real harm, but there may be something to be said about cannabis exacerbating an existing condition. For instance, if I had asthma and smoked a bowl and my asthma got worse, I can’t very well go around saying that cannabis gave me asthma.

Luckily, the (much smarter than I) folks at NORML drilled into the study that spawned this Fox-baby and delivered some great insight into how little it actually proves.

From NORML:
The [French researchers] looked for cannabis users and found a shade less than 2,000 in the past 5 years. It’s impossible to know what that number means without knowing the number of people these physicians saw or how many patients used cannabis and did not end up reported to this database…They then found a whopping 35 of these who had cardiac complications. It is impossible to know what to make of this number without knowing the number of cannabis users in France, which the authors report is 1.2 million. If you divide 35 by 1.2 million you get roughly .00003. I’m guessing that not all these cannabis users went to the doctor…so let’s say that we’re off by two orders of magnitude. Let’s give the prohibitionists the benefit of the doubt and multiply by 100. That’d put the rate of problems up to .003. If those are the chances of having cardiac complications…my first thought is that using cannabis protects people from cardiac problems. We need a comparison group of people who don’t use cannabis to know their rate of cardiac problems…we simply don’t have those data. The closest estimates were 57 per 10,000 people, based on another study, which is .0057, or almost twice as bad as the rate among the cannabis users (after our generous overestimation).”

Seen through a lens of rational science, I’m inclined to agree with NORML’s assessment that cannabis may, in fact, lower the risk of cardiovascular complication.

For now, I’m eagerly awaiting the next ad-driving load of donkey crap to dispute.