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Marijuana use holds three-fold blood pressure death risk: study

reuters.com

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Re: Marijuana use holds three-fold blood pressure death risk: study

#41

Post by dekhn »

CJefferson wrote: post #6
nxsynonym wrote: post #4

>> "If marijuana use is implicated in cardiovascular diseases and deaths, then it rests on the health community and policy makers to protect the public." Like how the policy makers protect the public from Alcohol, tobacco, and over-the-counter meds? Also a 1200 person study isn't really enough to draw any major conclusions from. Of course ingesting anything substance of any kind frequently over a period of time is bo…

Policy makers do put quite a lot of work into protecting us from alcohol, tobacco and over the counter meds. Also, 1200 people is a fairly huge study, plenty to get some quality statistics from. I'm not sure why you have been so offended by this research. It looks quite convincing to me, and fairly worrying.

The N of the study isn't the issue here. It's the large collection of other methodological details, such as self-reported survey data, and a lack of dose-response, that invalidate it for policy purposes.

When you say it "looks quite convincing", are you qualified to judge it on its merits?

Re: Marijuana use holds three-fold blood pressure death risk: study

#43

Post by millzlane »

CJefferson wrote: post #6
nxsynonym wrote: post #4

>> "If marijuana use is implicated in cardiovascular diseases and deaths, then it rests on the health community and policy makers to protect the public." Like how the policy makers protect the public from Alcohol, tobacco, and over-the-counter meds? Also a 1200 person study isn't really enough to draw any major conclusions from. Of course ingesting anything substance of any kind frequently over a period of time is bo…

Policy makers do put quite a lot of work into protecting us from alcohol, tobacco and over the counter meds. Also, 1200 people is a fairly huge study, plenty to get some quality statistics from. I'm not sure why you have been so offended by this research. It looks quite convincing to me, and fairly worrying.

>It looks quite convincing to me, and fairly worrying.

That's how propaganda works.

I know it's anecdotal, but I've been a 3 or more times a day (everyday) smoker for over 11.5 years and I'm an no where near the risk of my overweight family members. Blood pressure has been fine and I'm an no risk of hypertension. Demand more proof if you're convinced by this. Something smells fishy. I would like to know how Snoop, Willie, and Morgan are holding up. They must be ready to keel over with how they smoke.

Re: Marijuana use holds three-fold blood pressure death risk: study

#45

Post by youzesix »

I hate the rationale that's implicitly being put forward in these arguments, and that underlies health care in the US.

The US health system is set up under this model that assumes you're incompetent and should be prevented from making any decisions on your own, and only allowed to use something if it's deemed inconsequential enough.

That is, it is assumed a person has no decision-making competency, and then the burden of proof is on someone to show that you do, or that a decision is within the realm of what someone's limited competency is.

This seems completely backward: you should be assumed to be competent, and then only have that legally determined otherwise through extraordinary means.

All drug regulation should be eliminated, and be replaced by a competency-based evaluation, much like if someone is dementing or cognitively incapable.

That is, if someone is shown to be addicted, they should be ruled incompetent about making drug-related decisions through evaluations by psychologists and the courts, etc. Then that person would be treated as a vulnerable individual, like a child or cognitively impaired adult, and anyone taking advantage of that person would be treated similarly.

The scheduling system and healthcare system is so screwed up and I don't see why this isn't discussed more. There would be so much more competition, and it is completely different from the issue of who pays: you could have the government decide what it wants to pay for, and leave people who want something different to pay for it through different means.

Re: Marijuana use holds three-fold blood pressure death risk: study

#46

Post by eric_bullington »

swasheck wrote: post #24
CJefferson wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Policy makers do put quite a lot of work into protecting us from alcohol, tobacco and over the counter meds. Also, 1200 people is a fairly huge study, plenty to get some quality statistics from. I'm not sure why you have been so offended by this research. It looks quite convincing to me, and fairly worrying.

I agree on your second point. 1200 people is a substantial population. However, we'd also need to read more about the details of the study to see how it was conducted and how controls were controlled and then, naturally, someone would have to reproduce the results using the same methodology. There are plenty of questions to be asked of this study, but blithely dismissing the sample size while attacking the government…

> 1200 people is a fairly huge study,

1200 people is a huge, convincing study for a well-executed prospective, interventional study, like a clinical trial. This is a cross-sectional retrospective study, using merged data from several different sources. Retrospective, epidemiological studies are notoriously subject to bias, particularly ones like this one.

Such retrospective studies are good for forming hypotheses about diseases in study populations (and often, intervention studies are not feasible), but they are often inadequate for testing these hypotheses. As the study authors say themselves, longitudinal studies are required to really draw strong inferences.

I'd have to read the study to be sure, and it's been a long time since I formally studied or worked in epidemiology/biostatistics, but some of the numbers mentioned in this article look fairly unconvincing. For example, this study found very little association between tobacco use and metabolic syndome, which goes against most available evidence. Also, things like having insurance and being married are associated with a significant increase in metabolic syndrome (not sure if this is in line with existing research, but it sounds kind of counterintuitive).

Re: Marijuana use holds three-fold blood pressure death risk: study

#47

Post by laythea »

nxsynonym wrote: post #4

>> "If marijuana use is implicated in cardiovascular diseases and deaths, then it rests on the health community and policy makers to protect the public." Like how the policy makers protect the public from Alcohol, tobacco, and over-the-counter meds? Also a 1200 person study isn't really enough to draw any major conclusions from. Of course ingesting anything substance of any kind frequently over a period of time is bo…

Don't forget coffee. I need the government to protect me from my cups, every day. What to do???

Re: Marijuana use holds three-fold blood pressure death risk: study

#48

Post by kolbe »

nxsynonym wrote: post #4

>> "If marijuana use is implicated in cardiovascular diseases and deaths, then it rests on the health community and policy makers to protect the public." Like how the policy makers protect the public from Alcohol, tobacco, and over-the-counter meds? Also a 1200 person study isn't really enough to draw any major conclusions from. Of course ingesting anything substance of any kind frequently over a period of time is bo…

Adding soda, bike riding, swimming, TV/internet/gaming addiction...

Sometime freedom means the freedom to make what others think are bad decisions.

Re: Marijuana use holds three-fold blood pressure death risk: study

#49

Post by web_worker »

millzlane wrote: post #43
CJefferson wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Policy makers do put quite a lot of work into protecting us from alcohol, tobacco and over the counter meds. Also, 1200 people is a fairly huge study, plenty to get some quality statistics from. I'm not sure why you have been so offended by this research. It looks quite convincing to me, and fairly worrying.

>It looks quite convincing to me, and fairly worrying. That's how propaganda works. I know it's anecdotal, but I've been a 3 or more times a day (everyday) smoker for over 11.5 years and I'm an no where near the risk of my overweight family members. Blood pressure has been fine and I'm an no risk of hypertension. Demand more proof if you're convinced by this. Something smells fishy. I would like to know how Snoop, Wi…

And this is how confirmation bias works. 'Something about this study feels fishy... what about these anecdotes?' You did call yourself out for being anecdotal, so I'm sure you see it. As a fellow daily smoker I very much want to pick holes in this as well.

Re: Marijuana use holds three-fold blood pressure death risk: study

#50

Post by TallGuyShort »

CJefferson wrote: post #6
nxsynonym wrote: post #4

>> "If marijuana use is implicated in cardiovascular diseases and deaths, then it rests on the health community and policy makers to protect the public." Like how the policy makers protect the public from Alcohol, tobacco, and over-the-counter meds? Also a 1200 person study isn't really enough to draw any major conclusions from. Of course ingesting anything substance of any kind frequently over a period of time is bo…

Policy makers do put quite a lot of work into protecting us from alcohol, tobacco and over the counter meds. Also, 1200 people is a fairly huge study, plenty to get some quality statistics from. I'm not sure why you have been so offended by this research. It looks quite convincing to me, and fairly worrying.

The difference between how you're treated for consuming alcohol (which as far as I'm aware is objectively more dangerous - and more immediately so to other people - than marijuana) and for consuming marijuana in most places is pretty ridiculous, to the point of almost seeming like satire. Alcohol also has a pretty significant (don't think it's quite this significant, granted) effect on coronary health, not to mention liver damager, etc. And yet the reason for the difference is that we just accepted alcohol prohibition doesn't work. But guess how easily you can get marijuana, even where it's illegal at the state and local level too...

To be clear, I think this is good research to be done. Better to know about this than not, obviously, and I hope it leads people to make some better life decisions. But I'm also anticipating that this is going to get held up as, "You see? It's the devil's grass!" in a very illogical and inconsistent way.

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