According to a new study, consumers of marijuana are not aware of the health risks of smoking.
The study, which was recently published in the journal Addiction, has revealed that hundreds of thousands of people who smoke marijuana describe themselves as non-smokers. According to experts, this mean that users may not appreciate that smoking the drug carries many of the same health risks as smoking tobacco.
The survey was based on almost 13,000 British adults, and estimates that 380,000 people who describe themselves as non-smokers are smoking cannabis with or without tobacco at least weekly.
A further 830,000 tobacco smokers also smoke cannabis at least weekly which indicates that there may be around 1.2 million weekly cannabis smokers in Britain.
“It is extremely concerning,” remarked Hannah Walsh of King’s College London, one of the study’s authors. “It is possible that they do not realise they are putting their health at risk. It’s also a concern that people may be unwittingly establishing a tobacco addiction, with cannabis acting as their route into a lifetime of smoking tobacco.”
The study has noted recent research that UK-based recreational marijuana users are mixing the drug with tobacco and use about 0.35g of tobacco per joint.
“This exposes participants to cotinine (the main metabolite of nicotine found in the bloodstream) levels suggestive of moderate tobacco exposure, equivalent to that found in light/moderate cigarette smokers,” the study found.
“Government generally sees cannabis and tobacco as separate issues but plainly their use is deeply interwoven,” said Hazel Cheeseman, director of policy at Action on Smoking and Health. “There is an opportunity to address this in the government’s planned Addiction Strategy. This strategy must include measures to tackle the overlapping use of cannabis and tobacco and the resulting harm to health.”
