“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.
“Undoubtedly, cigarettes and e-cigarettes are unhealthy and not good for the lungs. However, the vaporization of marijuana seems even worse,” she said.
“Since many teenagers who abuse nicotine also abuse cannabis, I recommend parents treat all vaping as risky behavior (just like alcohol or drugs),” Boyd said in an email.
Vaping weeds is associated with a dangerous, newly identified lung disease called EVALI, short for e-cigarette or vaping, lung damage associated with the use of the product.
The disease was first identified by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in August 2019, when otherwise healthy young people began to be hospitalized for severe, sometimes fatal, lung infections across the country.
A link was soon found between the new deadly condition and steam, with a major role played by vitamin E acetate, a sticky oily substance often added to steam products to thicken or dilute the oil in cartridges.
This was especially common in vaping 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 between the ages of 12 and 17 to describe the last 30 days of using cigarettes, e-cigarettes and weeds, and the total time they spent smoking. marijuana throughout their “life”. “
Each adolescent was also asked if he or she had any of these five symptoms in the past year: whistling or whistling in the chest; disturbed sleep due to wheezing; limited speech due to wheezing; wheezing during or after exercise and suffering from a dry cough at night that has not been caused by a cold or chest infection.
After analyzing the data, Boyd and her team found that the use of “cannabis vaping throughout adolescence” was associated with all five negative respiratory symptoms.
“This was not true for the use of cigarettes or electronic cigarettes,” Boyd said.
The study was limited by the initial questions asked in the PATH study, which did not allow the researchers to fully explore the cannabis vaporization over time. In a household survey, the longitudinal study also ruled out teens living in institutions that “may have higher rates of cannabis use,” Boyd said.
Despite these limitations, “the current study had a large national sample and found a robust association between lifetime cannabis use with ENDS (electronic nicotine delivery systems) and respiratory symptoms during a critical stage of development among young people.” , said Boyd.
Would these health problems also apply to adults spraying weeds? The study was not designed to test this, Boyd said, but “THC / CBD vaping is a relatively new behavior, and therefore not many individuals over the age of 25 have been smoking cannabis in adolescence. We have too little data to make an assessment. “
That doesn’t mean steaming is safe behavior, Boyd said.
“I am often approached by both parents and teenagers who believe that cannabis smoking is” OK “and better than smoking (joint, blunt, bruise, etc.). And so, they ask, “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 breathing problems.
“And yet, do you seem to think that heating chemicals (including carcinogens) in a ship and inhaling them is healthy?” My answer is, “No, it’s not healthy behavior.” “