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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

#91
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yea i had a hard time making sense of the paper, probably my fault. it seemed like they didn't control for obesity, and it also seemed like alcohol had a much stronger correlation. I would love to hear from someone that can properly read it though. I also find it interesting that the odds for marijuana users are 1.05 per year but, e.g. marriage is 1.17, alcohol 1.84 etc, yet the conclusion is about marijuana. Bias: I…

The headline could have been... > Marriage greater risk to heart than cannabis: report But that wouldn't sell as well.

Hah!

In seriousness, I'm curious of its relationship to anxiety. Anxiety seems to increase with my intake of cannabis. I'm also trying to do 5 projects at once which increases stress.

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

#93
First, I don't see any actual link to an actual study.

Second, even if this is true, I'm a fucking adult and can make my own decisions. It changes nothing about my support for legalization especially when shit like tobacco and alcohol are legal which we know for sure cause hundreds of thousands of deaths each year.

Third, from the Oregonian link below because the actual link provides little detail: "But it did not take other cardiovascular risk factors into account, including diet and exercise." Oh yes, let's ignore the most obvious causes of heart problems completely. Surely they couldn't possibly be responsible.

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

#95

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 burde…

Great points but it's not just the health system. The nanny mindset you describe permeates all of American culture. In fact, it's inseparable. As H.L. Mencken puts it: "The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy," is the heart of American Puritan culture to this day. Nevermind that addiction is absolute hell on earth. Fear knows no nuance or facts for that matter.

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

#98
People are rightly criticizing this study, but for the wrong reasons.

1. There is no establishment of causality, but the article pretends there is. People who use marijuana may use it because they have high-stress lives.

2. It only applies to smokers. About 70% of the marijuana products at the dispensaries I've been to are not meant to be smoked. To quote the original article ['Recreational marijuana is primarily smoked; we hypothesize that like cigarette smoking, marijuana use will be associated with increased cardiovascular mortalities']

3. No link to original study. [I think it's this: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2047487317723212]

4. This could be a million different things. This could be related to the stress of being afraid of being fired, or arrested. This could be tainted drugs from bad suppliers. This could be because marijuana smokers are more likely to take drugs that do change blood pressure.

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

#99
post #88

>> "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…

> Like how the policy makers protect the public from Alcohol, tobacco, and over-the-counter meds? Well... yeah. Exactly like that. State and local laws cover when and where you can drink and smoke. The federal FDA extensively regulates OTC medications. HHS and ATF have extensive jurisdiction here too. And of course there is a very large private sector component made up of groups like AA, AlAnon and MADD that seek to…

I didn't mean to imply it shouldn't be regulated. From the way the article worded it made it seem like it was policy makers duty to protect the public from "reefer madness".

Yes those other things have regulations and restrictions, but how many alcohol related deaths have there been this year? How many heroin over doses that stemmed from prescription abuse?

My point is that context is necessary for these types of studies.

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

#100
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not offended. I encourage more studies to be done! 1200 is a large number of people, but not large relative to the number of people who consume regularly. What I'm railing against is "news" articles that don't contextualize or think critically about the studies that are being performed, and try to generate clicks through buzz-word filled headlines.

Recognize that this knee jerk reaction is your brain's attempt at dismissing the study and move on.

It's easy to dismiss studies that have a large number of caveats and no strict way of measuring use.
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