“This surprised us, we thought we would find more negative respiratory symptoms in both cigarette and e-cigarette users,” said study author Carol Boyd, co-director of the Center for the Study of Drugs, Alcohol , Smoking and Health at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
“Certainly, cigarettes and e-cigarettes are not healthy and are not good for the lungs. Still, smoking marijuana seems even worse,” he said.
“Because many teens who vaporize nicotine also vaporize cannabis, I recommend parents treat all vaping as risky behavior (just like alcohol or drug use),” Boyd said in an email.
Weed vaporization is associated with a newly identified dangerous lung disease called EVALI, short for electronic cigarette or vaping. lung injury associated with the use of the product.
The disease was first identified by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in August 2019, when on the other hand, healthy young people began to be hospitalized for serious, sometimes fatal, lung infections throughout the country.
A link was soon found between the new deadly condition and vaporization, with an important role in vitamin E acetate, an adhesive oily substance that is often added to vaporization products to thicken or dilute oil in cartridges. .
This was especially common in vaporization products containing THC, the main psychoactive compound in marijuana.
“According to the CDC, 84% of EVALI cases were associated with cannabis-containing products,” Boyd said.
Five respiratory problems
A fourth wave of the PATH study asked nearly 15,000 teens ages 12 to 17 to describe their last use of cigarettes, e-cigarettes, and weeds for 30 days, as well as the total time they spent smoking marijuana during his life”. “
Each teen was also asked if they had any of these five symptoms over the past year: wheezing or wheezing in the chest; sleep disturbed by wheezing; limited speech due to wheezing; wheezing during or after exercise and experiencing a dry cough at night that is not due to a cold or chest infection.
After analyzing the data, Boyd and his team found that “smoking cannabis throughout a teenager’s life” was associated with the five negative respiratory symptoms.
“This was not true for the use of cigarettes or e-cigarettes,” Boyd said.
The study was limited by the original questions asked in the PATH study, which did not allow researchers to fully explore cannabis vaporization over time. According to a family survey, the longitudinal study excluded adolescents residing in institutions that “may have higher rates of cannabis use,” Boyd said.
Despite these limitations, “the current study had a large national sample and we found a strong association between lifelong cannabis use with ENDS (electronic nicotine delivery systems) and respiratory symptoms during a critical stage of development between young people, ”Boyd said.
Would these health concerns also apply to adults spraying weeds? Boyd said the study was not designed to test this, but “smoking THC / CBD is a relatively new behavior and therefore not many people over the age of 25 smoke cannabis as teenagers. We have too much little data to evaluate “.
That doesn’t mean vaping is safe behavior, Boyd stressed.
“I’m often approached by both parents and teens who believe that smoking cannabis is‘ right ’and it’s better than smoking (joint, forcefulness, dobie, etc.). And so they ask me,‘ Vaping is safe, right? “
“My reaction: ‘You’re fooling yourself. We know that inhaling hot tobacco / cannabis smoke into the lungs is unhealthy and can cause life-threatening bronchitis or respiratory problems.
“Still, do you seem to think that heating chemicals (including carcinogens) in steam and inhaling them is healthy? My answer is, ‘No, it’s not healthy behavior.'”