Cannabis users face substantially higher risk of heart attack (2025)

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• Hacker News
• It’s starting to look like THC ( found in gummies, too ) causes vascular problems.
  by RickJWagner
• You get the munchies

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN1AQDxwrSg

  by ChrisMarshallNY
• Before we got Ozempic there was great hope for

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimonabant

  which blocks the receptor that THC binds to and led to weight loss and further improvements of the “metabolic syndrome” beyond weight loss alone. Unfortunately it caused major depression in some people including suicide.

  So looking at it that way it would be no surprise that cannabis causes weight gain and metabolic syndrome and in fact my experience is that if I am using cannabis I get a few kg. I think that is the THC and on top of that if you are smoking you are inhaling small particles that turn your blood into sludge (e.g. your blood is a “complex fluid” with cells in it that can be damaged) and doing damage to your lungs and capillaries and promoting inflammation and all that.

  by PaulHoule
• Good. This crap has been to normalized, especially online.
  by Scroll_Swe
• Willie Nelson.
  by spl757
• "We should have some caution in interpreting the findings in that cannabis consumption is usually associated with other substances such as cocaine or other illicit drugs that are not accounted for,"
  by il-b
• Come on people, it is a drug. Exercise, cardio, eat well, sleep well, it's your choice the risks you take, but try to balance the good with the bad, if you partake in "bad".
  by bsenftner
• Don't smoke anything kids, it is not good
  by pvsk10
• I love these articles. When the hundred heavy pot users all come at once with their impartial critiques and studious analyses.

  What I like more is some of the people that will agree with me would crucify if the topic was about ADHD meds.

  by SV_BubbleTime
• I’ve started trying to guess how many top-level comments will be from people who don’t know anything about the study but have read a lot of erowid or whatever, acting like study experts and thinking “correlation is not causation” is an impressive thing to say. It’s like guessing jelly beans in a jar.

  All noise, zero signal, anytime pot (especially) or other drugs are mentioned.

  by jmye
• It's rare to see a study where "no link was found"
  by jkuli
• Without a clear mechanism of action, this sure requires monitoring (like any drug), but the conclusions are terribly oversold. Correlation does not imply causation, no matter the sample size
  by khalic
• Is this really the largest factor they found in all our medical data?
  by jkuli
• The data is from EMR records. The researchers stated themselves ~ “people should be more forthcoming with their doctors.” I don’t think anything meaningful can be concluded other than most people don’t like having the fact that they have done cocaine on their medical records.
  by reilly3000
• He who attacks the munchies..
  by warumdarum
• I mean, it's good that we have data showing some sort of connection between heart attacks and cannabis, but I appreciate the callout toward the end more:

  > Since both studies were limited by their retrospective nature and the meta-analysis was limited by the challenges inherent in pooling data from multiple studies, researchers said that additional prospective studies would help to confirm the findings and determine which groups may face the highest risk.

  Here's the thing that both the alarmists and the naysayers keep ignoring: all this data is new, it's recent, and decades of effective global prohibition have meant the only sources of reliable data came from either post-war/pre-prohibition studies (often by Defense Departments) or from "anecdata" gathered retrospectively among large cohorts. We still lack a substantial amount of direct, quality, long-term data on drug use and Nth-order impacts on the body, and these studies are the first steps towards getting more data from higher quality research to draw better conclusions from.

  If anything, I try to be quite open with my Doctors about my own use precisely because I know that data is thin and dated, and any contributions from patients in an honest manner is going to help draw better conclusions for healthcare guidance tomorrow. Letting alarmists use these thin precursors as justification for a return to total prohibition is the wrong move.

  by stego-tech
• correct. the push for dispensaries has been financial not medical. now that we are getting large scale trials there will be more real evidence to show the public health effects. my guess: it will go the way of smoking eventually. realization around public health effects -> cost of those effects on public services -> taxes and costs go up. I'm curious as to why heart attack and not stroke. seems like bp isn't the only thing at play.
  by ascotan
• quite a few people I know consume edibles as the main form of cannabis. but it seems underrepresented in all the studies I've seen so far. as several others have pointed out, you would think the act of smoking would itself have nontrivial effects on health
  by laybak
• I wonder if they're doing these studies, finding no significant effect, and just dropping them.
  by zug_zug
• i researched and experimented with edibles after beign diagnosed with CVD.

  i don't beleive edibles are any safer

  by dubeye
• One can also use vapes. I avoid the cartridge types as I don't want to guess what was used to process them. Instead I use a simple flower vape which on the face of it should be less bad than say smoking from a joint or bong.

  Gummies and other edibles though require processing in the liver before they become active in the body (they are converted to a slightly different form of THC) so you would need to consider whether there are any negative effects on liver health from edibles and then compare to the various 'inhaled' methods.

  General friendly advice - for anything not flower, try to get things that are made by live rosin (not resin) as they are the cleanest and should not involve the use of any hydrocarbon solvents for extraction. Live resin would be next, though it does use hydrocarbons. Distilliates which are often in vape cartridges are almost always made with hydrocarbons. While the production method shouldn't matter if everything is done 100% properly, it does require trust that all the butane, etc has been fully removed from the final product.

  by beezle
• From what I've seen it's faced with a more stony resolve compared to side-effects of many USP substances.
  by fuzzfactor
• What a vague article. So I take some 10mg gummies every once in a while. Are my chances higher?
  by dmackerman
• Literally no mention of ROA. It matters whether they smoke plant matter, vape, use it orally, etc. This, combined with their inability to account for a number of other factors such as tobacco use, makes this study literally useless. Earned a flag from me.
  by IAmGraydon
• Agree on ROA, but the retrospective cohort study (one of two discussed in this article) did account for many other factors including tobacco use.
  by mil22
• For such widespread factors any correlation not based on randomised controlled trials should be dismissed. There is so much confounding that you end up measuring smoking vs heart disease. I will not be surprised by the result, cannabis usage increases lung cancer risk.
  by tsoukase
• people just want their recreational drugs

  it's as stupid as smoking/vaping and not even black box warnings will get people to stop

  now if you need pain management I can respect that 100%

  but you need to investigate Palmitoylethanolamide and Geraniol as alternatives

  * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48700498

  by ck2
• Can you respect folks who are treating mental/emotional pain or just physical?
  by block_dagger
• > people just want their recreational drugs

  Yes, people want to recreate, doing all kinds of activities with various levels of risk. They don't need to concern themselves with whether you can respect it.

  by balfirevic
• for the anxiety crowd: don't buy street weed and avoid sativas

  about the 'study': I do not trust anything that comes out of meta studies given how many base studies are found to be either garbage or very lacking in controls. And without knowing an accurate life history it is hard to rule out or quantify damages done much earlier in life.

  by beezle