A research published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that young adults, people under 45, who consumed cannabis within the last 30 days suffered from nearly double the number of heart attacks than adults who didn’t use the drug. Hence, when someone says ‘cannabis is good for health’, it is not necessarily true. 

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Also known as marijuana among other names, cannabis is a psychoactive drug obtained from the Cannabis plant. It is consumed by smoking, vaporizing, within food or as an extract. The psychoactive chemical of which is tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, according to the World Health Organization.

After analysing health data from over 33,000 adults ages 18 to 44 included in US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surveys in 2017 and 2018, the researchers found that of the 17% of adults who reported using cannabis within the previous month, 1.3% later had a heart attack while 0.8% of non-cannabis users reported the same.

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“There’s increasing evidence that this could potentially be harmful to you, both in the short term and the long term,” Dr. Karim Ladha, clinician-scientist and staff anesthesiologist at St. Michael’s Hospital and the University of Toronto in Canada said, as per CNN reports. 

Cannabis has many fall-outs. For one it creates an irregular heart rate. “When someone’s heart rate becomes irregular, it can increase the amount of oxygen the heart needs,” Ladha said, adding that cannabis can also limit the amount of oxygen delivered to the heart. 

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Some physical effects of the drug include euphoria, altered states of mind and sense of time, difficulty concentrating, impaired short-term memory and body movement relaxation and an increase in appetite, as per National Institute of Drug Abuse. 

Marijuana affects brain development. The drug may impair thinking, memory, and learning functions and affect how the brain builds connections between the areas necessary for these functions.