Emergency care and hospitalizations are 22 percent higher among Canadians who use cannabis compared with those who don’t, a new study has found.
According to lead author Dr. Nicholas Vozoris, a respirologist at St. Michael’s Hospital and associate scientist at the hospital’s Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, cannabis is not as harmless as proponents might think.
Other reasons included gastrointestinal problems, genitourinary issues, and muscle or joint pain.
“Using propensity score matching—a statistical matching technique—researchers compared the health outcomes of nearly 4,800 individuals who reported any cannabis use in the preceding 12 months with the health outcomes of over 10,000 individuals who reported never having used cannabis, or having used cannabis only once and more than 12 months ago,” said Unity Health Toronto in a press release on June 28.
To minimize bias, the authors said the analysis was adjusted for 31 confounding factors that could explain a hospital visit, including tobacco use, alcohol use, and illicit drug use.
While the main goal was to determine whether there was a link between cannabis use and respiratory-related hospitalization or emergency room visits, the study found no significant association between them.
However, the study did find cannabis users were 22 percent more likely to have an emergency room visit or hospital admission for any cause.
“In addition to having greater odds of going to the ED or being hospitalized, the findings show that one of every 25 people who use cannabis will go to the emergency department (ED) or be admitted to hospital within a year of using cannabis,” Unity Health Toronto said.
Vozoris said the results “support that health care professionals and [the] government should discourage recreational cannabis consumption in the general population.”
“Given the context of cannabis decriminalization in Canada, which has very likely facilitated the broader use of this product in the population, more efforts need to [be] made from our health and political leaders to educate and remind citizens about the harmful impacts of cannabis on health,” he said.
But the authors said they were unable to perform a comprehensive analysis with limited data access.
“We had access to cannabis use data only from the time prior to its decriminalization in Canada (ie, October 2018),” they said.
“We were also unable to adjust for possible secondhand cannabis smoke exposure among control individuals, as such data were not available to us.”