Americans are ingesting marijuana more regularly than alcohol, intriguing new data shows.
Roughly 17.7million people in the US are using the drug daily, compared to 14.7million daily drinkers, according to findings from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
This is the first time since records began in 1979 that marijuana has overtaken alcohol — a trend experts say is a direct result of widespread legalization.
Pro-weed advocates argue this shift is of benefit to the nation’s health. Marijuana’s reduced health risks, compared to booze, have long been a fundamental argument of the legalization lobby.
Earlier this month, the Biden administration announced it would reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, putting it in the same safety category as some types of Tylenol and steroids.
Country music star Willie Nelson is a long pro-weed campaigner, and has recently announced he is to pen a cookbook of his favorite cannabis recipes.
However, a slew of recent studies have sparked growing concerns about the myriad of health harms associated with regular weed use — particularly as today’s marijuana plants are at least four times more potent than they were 30 years ago.
Some products sold in dispensaries, such as resins and oils, contain 90 percent THC — the active ingredient in weed that causes the high — compared to four percent in 1995.
But what if you’re not a daily user, and only partake semi-regularly, in a similar way that most do with alcohol? Is it really less harmful?
The answer is not necessarily. But the related ailments are different, and depend on the quantity and frequency of use.
As weed legalization has spread across the US, reaching 24 states, numerous studies have begun to shed light on alarming health repercussions.
Research published Monday showed the number of hospital visits for cannabis poisoning among older adults tripled after the drug was legalized in Canada in 2018.
Recreational marijuana is legal in 24 states, though others have legalized it only for medicinal purposes
Meanwhile, in California, where the drug has been legal since 2016, hospital admissions for cannabis-related complications have shot up – from 1,400 in 2005 to 16,000 by 2019.
And the most recent CDC data showed roughly 130,000 people under 25 years old are admitted to the hospital for cannabis-related reasons every year in the US.
Experts say the reason for these weed-related admissions range from mental health crises, including psychotic breaks and attempted suicides, to heart and lung problems — and even a little-known vomiting condition called cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome thought to affect up to a third of regular users.
There’s also ample evidence showing a sharp increase in DUI cases related to marijuana in regions where the drug is legal.
In Canada, for instance, marijuana-related traffic accidents that required treatment in an emergency room rose 475 percent between 2010 and 2021, while drunk driving crashes grew only 9.4 percent.
But weed-related hospital visits still pale in comparison to admissions related to alcohol, said to be almost 2million every year, according to CDC data. And it’s worth stating that while hospitalizations for cannabis-related accidents are in the hundreds, those related to alcohol are in the thousands.
There is little doubt that when it comes to acute physical illness, chronic and heavy alcohol intake is more dangerous.
Studies have shown regular alcohol consumption can increase the risk of a number of conditions, including heart problems, liver disease, stroke, diabetes and several cancers.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), half of all cancers linked to alcohol are in those who drink less than three and a half pints of beer a week.
Further, a recent edict from the Canadian Center on Substance Use and Addiction states just two drinks a week is enough to increase the risk of a host of conditions, including heart disease.
The WHO recently changed its alcohol guidance to state that no amount of booze is safe.
Binge drinking has been shown to increase the risk of heart disease by at least 45 percent, and heart attacks by 72 percent, according to Harvard studies.
Experts think alcohol triggers health problems is by damaging DNA. In the body, booze is converted into acetaldehyde, a chemical that both harms DNA and prevents the body from repairing it.
Once DNA is damaged, cells can grow out of control and create a cancerous tumor, while also harming the cells that line blood vessels, causing problems with the cardiovascular system.
Every year around 178,000 deaths in the US are attributable to alcohol, compared to around 300 for weed.
But cannabis is not safe for heart health. Those who use cannabis daily — and mostly smoke it — are 25 percent more likely than non-users to have a heart attack, and 42 percent more likely to suffer stroke.
However, the mental health effects of marijuana are arguably more significant than that of alcohol. And life-wrecking psychosis can happen after just one joint or edible.
A 2019 study by researchers at Kings College London found daily use of high-potency weed can increase the risk of psychosis by five-fold.
Bryn Spejcher, a 34-year-old audiologist in California, went into violent psychosis after smoking marijuana, which she was normally against. She stabbed her boyfriend 108 times, as well as herself and her beloved dog
While deaths from alcohol may be far greater in terms of numbers, those related to cannabis tend to be more violent and extreme.
Perhaps one of the most chilling cases of this was seen with the recent tale of Californian audiologist Bryn Spejcher, who stabbed her date 108 times, killing him, while suffering cannabis-induced psychosis.
Spejcher, now 34, had only gotten high ‘a handful’ of times in her life.
A DailyMail.com investigation published last year discovered that at least 290 American children have suffered brutal, preventable deaths linked to marijuana over the last decade.
Cases include the Texan man who murdered his nine-month-old baby with a pocket knife while suffering cannabis-induced psychosis, and the Illinois mother who suffocated her four-year-old daughter to death while shouting, ‘I’m sending Emily to see Jesus’.
Other studies have found regular marijuana use makes you three times more likely to die by suicide, and recent US experiments have found teens who regularly get high have stunted development of areas of the brain involved with reasoning and learning.
Scientists believe the THC in cannabis interferes with signals in the brain that control mood, attention and memory, as well as feelings of reward and pleasure.
In comparison, a 2022 review of 23 studies by experts at Canada’s McMaster University found no significant risk of depression or anxiety in adolescents who binge drink.
CDC researchers found there were around 90,000 fatalities among adults aged 20 to 65 per year between 2015-2019 in which booze was an underlying or contributing cause.
Dr Roneet Lev, an emergency medicine doctor working in California, told DailyMail.com: ‘Chemically speaking alcohol is water soluble. It is metabolized at a reliable steady rate in the urine.
‘THC, the psychoactive component of marijuana is fat soluble. That means the drug likes to stick around the fatty parts of the body, namely the brain.
‘Large population based studies have shown that that the risk of cannabis induced psychosis can be up to 20 percent. That can happen after a single use. Alcohol does not have the same risk for psychosis as marijuana.
Alcoholics who develop psychosis do you after years of drinking, not after an episode of binge drinking.’
Then there’s the risk of addiction.
It has long been argued addiction to cannabis is incredibly rare. However, experts now say this is a harmful myth.
Studies by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) estimate that around four million Americans meet the criteria for ‘marihuana use disorder,’ or addiction.
Additionally, a study in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry found nearly one-in-five people who smoke cannabis met the criteria for dependence.
Danish research involving 6.6million people born between 1985 and 2021 revealed 41 percent of those addicted to cannabis were diagnosed with major depression.
They also found chronic marijuana use quadrupled a person’s risk of being diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
What’s more, experts say there are still vast gaps in our knowledge about the long term impact of high potency marijuana, while the data on the risks of alcohol are plenty.
‘We have decades of research on the health effects of drinking,’ internal medicine physician Dr Salomeh Keyhani told the Washington Post.
‘But research on cannabis is still evolving and the public health consequences of its commercialized use — in new products and doses — will take years to understand. ‘
Ultimately, Dr Keyhani says infrequent marijuana use is unlikely to do much harm if you are using a low strength product, and not smoking it.
She says: ‘I suggest they try edible CBD products with a THC content of less than five percent — with the caveat that edibles can enter the system more slowly and unpredictably, so patients should start low and go slow.’
Source: Daily Mail Online
