“This surprised us, we thought we would find more negative respiratory symptoms in 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.
“Without a doubt, cigarettes and e-cigarettes are not healthy and are not good for the lungs. However, vaporizing marijuana looks even worse, ”she said.
“Since many teenagers who spray nicotine also spray cannabis, I recommend that parents treat all spraying as a risky behavior (as well as the use of alcohol or drugs),” Boyd said in an email.
The vaping weed is associated with a recently identified dangerous lung disease, called EVALI, short for e-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 healthy young people began to be hospitalized for serious, sometimes fatal, lung infections across the country.
A link between the new deadly condition and vaporization was soon found, with an important role being played by vitamin E acetate, a sticky oily substance often added to vaporization products to thicken or dilute the oil in the cartridges.
This was especially common in spray products that contained THC, the main psychoactive compound in marijuana.
“According to the CDC, 84% of EVALI cases were associated with products containing cannabis,” said Boyd.
Five breathing problems
A fourth wave of the PATH study asked nearly 15,000 teenagers between the ages of 12 and 17 to describe the use of cigarettes, electronic cigarettes and marijuana in the past 30 days, as well as the total time they spent vaporizing marijuana during their “life”. “
Each teenager was also asked if they had any of these five symptoms in the past year: wheezing or hissing in the chest; disturbed sleep due to wheezing; limited speech due to wheezing; wheezing during or after exercise and a dry cough at night that was not caused by a cold or chest infection.
After analyzing the data, Boyd and his team found that the use of “lifetime cannabis vaporization in adolescents” was associated with all five negative respiratory symptoms.
“This was not true for cigarette or e-cigarette use,” said Boyd.
The study was limited by the original questions asked in the PATH study, which did not allow researchers to fully explore vaporized cannabis over time. A household survey, the longitudinal study also excluded teenagers who reside in institutions that “may have higher rates of cannabis use,” said Boyd.
Despite these limitations, “the current study had a large national sample and we found a robust association between lifetime use of cannabis with ENDS (electronic nicotine delivery systems) and respiratory symptoms during a critical stage of development among young people” said Boyd.
Do these health concerns also apply to adults who spray marijuana? The study was not designed to test this, Boyd said, but “spraying THC / CBD is a relatively new behavior and therefore not many individuals over 25 years of age sprayed cannabis as teenagers. We have little data to make an assessment. “
This does not mean that vaporizing is safe, Boyd emphasized.
“I am often approached by parents and teenagers who believe that vaping cannabis is ‘OK’ and better than smoking (a joint, blunt, dobie, etc.). And then, they ask, ‘Vaping is safe, right?’
“My reaction: ‘You’re kidding yourself. We know that inhaling hot tobacco / cannabis smoke into your lungs is unhealthy and can cause bronchitis or life-threatening breathing problems.
“And yet, do you seem to believe that heating chemicals (including carcinogens) in a steam and inhaling them is healthy? My answer is, ‘No, it is not healthy behavior.’ “