Isn’t there always?
A new study suggests that anyone who smokes marijuana faces a threefold risk of dying from high blood pressure than people who have never used the drug.
Those findings sound alarming, but it’s important to keep in mind that, like any study, this one has limitations, including that it defines marijuana “users” as anyone who’s ever tried the drug and that it doesn’t differentiate among strains of a highly unregulated product.
However, the study highlights some key areas for future study — including how using cannabis might affect the heart.
Criminalization made thorough studies of marijuana’s health effects almost impossible, and a study like this one amalgamating one-time users with habitual users probably doesn’t have much utility, either. This needs to change, now that there’s greater legal tolerance for the drug, so that individuals and governments can better understand what we’re getting into.