Can smoking weed double your chances of having a heart attack?

Yes.....but there's more to this answer.

A study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal states that young adults who smoke cannabis have double the chances of having a heart attack compared to those who don't smoke.

But there's more to this than meets the eye.

The study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that those who had smoked cannabis(four or more times) in the previous month had a slightly higher chance of suffering a heart attack compared to those who didn't smoke cannabis.

The study indicates that 61 people out of 4610 cannabis users (1.3%) and 240 people out of 28 563 non-users (0.8%), reported heart attacks.

A report in CNN, published in September 2021, compares these two numbers to state that cannabis use can double heart attack risk.

While that's TECHNICALLY true, it fails to clearly establish the difference between absolute risk and relative risk.

Absolute risk and relative risk.

Absolute risk is the actual risk or possibility that you will have a heart attack in the course of your life.

Relative risk is your risk in comparison to others' risk, or in this case, Group A's risk, compared to Group B's risk.

This is also because young adults have a relatively lower heart attack risk than older adults.

So technically, yes, weed smokers are more than twice as likely as non-smokers to have a heart attack.

But the fact that the relative heart attack risk in young adults who smoke cannabis is more than double than non-smokers is only because the prevalence of heart attacks in young adults is very low already.

Ingesting the fumes from burning anything, including plant matter, can damage your lungs.

Apart from the damage to your lungs, Dr Karim Ladha, the lead author of the study also noted that previous research points at cannabis use altering users' heart rates.

Dr Ladha is a clinician-scientist and staff anesthesiologist at St. Michael's Hospital and the University of Toronto in Canada.

Speaking about smoking cannabis he adds, "There's increasing evidence that this could be harmful to you, both in the short term and the long term."

But, more real-time research is essential to draw a conclusion, he says. Real-time research is challenging because of different marijuana laws in different parts of the world.