“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.
“Cigarettes and e-cigarettes are undoubtedly unhealthy and not good for the lungs. However, vaping marijuana seems even worse,” she said.
“Since many teens who vape nicotine also vape cannabis, I recommend that parents treat all vaping as risky behavior (as with alcohol or drug use),” Boyd said via email.
Vaping cannabis is associated with a dangerous, newly identified lung disease called EVALI, short for e-cigarette or vaping. lung damage from product use.
The disease was first identified by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in August 2019, when otherwise healthy young people were admitted across the country for serious, sometimes fatal, lung infections.
A link was soon found between the deadly new state and vaping, with an important role played by vitamin E acetate, a sticky oil substance often added to vaping products to thicken or dilute the oil in cartridges.
This was especially the case when vaping products containing THC, the main psychoactive compound in marijuana.
“According to the CDC, 84% of EVALI cases were related to products containing cannabis,” Boyd said.
Five breathing problems
A fourth wave of the PATH study asked nearly 15,000 teens between the ages of 12 and 17 to describe their last 30-day use of cigarettes, e-cigarettes, and weed, as well as the total time they spent vaping marijuana during their life’. “
Each teen was also asked if they had any of these five symptoms in the past year: wheezing or whistling in the chest; disturbed sleep due to wheezing; limited speech due to wheezing; wheezing during or after exercise and a dry cough at night not due to a cold or chest infection.
After analyzing the data, Boyd and her team found that “vaping cannabis during the lifetime of adolescents” was associated with all five negative respiratory symptoms.
“This was not true of the use of cigarettes or e-cigarettes,” said Boyd.
The study was limited by the original questions asked in the PATH study, which prevented the researchers from fully examining cannabis vaping over time. A household survey, the Longitudinal Study, also excluded adolescents living in institutions that “may be using more cannabis,” Boyd said.
Despite those limitations, “the current study had a large national sample and found a robust association between lifelong cannabis use with ENDS (electronic nicotine delivery systems) and respiratory symptoms during a critical stage of development in young people,” said Boyd.
Would these health concerns also affect adults who vape marijuana? The study was not designed to test that, Boyd said, but “THC / CBD vaping is a relatively new behavior, and so not many people over 25 years old have vaped cannabis as teenagers. We have too little data to make a review. . “
That doesn’t mean vaping is a safe behavior, Boyd pointed out.
“I am often approached by both parents and teenagers who think that vaporizing cannabis is ‘OK’ and better than smoking (a joint, blunt, dobie, etc.). And so they ask, ‘Vaping is safe – right?’
My response: ‘You’re kidding yourself. We know that inhaling hot tobacco / cannabis smoke into your lungs is unhealthy and can cause bronchitis or life-threatening respiratory problems.
“And yet you seem to believe that heating chemicals (including carcinogens) to vapor and inhaling them is healthy? My answer is, ‘No, it’s not healthy behavior.’