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Comment by hncurious | Hacker News Reader

This study is really just "smoking linked to higher risk".

I think it's any marijuana use, not just smoking:

The primary exposure for our study was any recent cannabis use, categorized as a binary outcome. In the BRFSS, participants were asked, “During the past 30 days, on how many days did you use [marijuana or hashish (2017)] [marijuana or cannabis (2018)]?” We defined any recent cannabis use as using cannabis 1 or more time during the past 30 days.

Results for other methods of consumption were not statistically significant:

"Similarly, a higher odds of history of MI was observed with vapourization as a primary method of cannabis consumption (adjusted OR 2.26, 95% CI 0.58–8.82) and other forms of cannabis consumption, including edibles (adjusted OR 2.36, 95% CI 0.81–6.88) when compared with nonusers; however, these were not statistically significant."

When they say "primary method of cannabis consumption" do they mean the primary method of consumption in the past 30 days? Or do they mean the primary method of lifetime consumption?

I'm also not sure "primary method of consumption" is the right question to ask? If someone smokes three days a week and has edibles the other four their primary method would be edibles but that doesn't erase the risk of the smoking.

CDC has archival surveys at https://www.cdc.gov/brfss/questionnaires/index.htm

The phrasing based on 2018 form was:

"During the past 30 days, which one of the following ways did you use marijuana the most often? Did you usually…"

Smoking a joint is every bit as bad as smoking a cigarette, in terms of carcinogens/tar and other nastiness, but most people aren't two-pack-a-day joint smokers so dose is typically lower. It still isn't healthy though.

IIRC smoking a joint is actually worse than smoking a cigarette, one-for-one, because of the filter a cig has. Smoking joints, the activity, is still said to be healthier than smoking cigarettes, because of the disparity in cylinders-consumed-per-day in average users, as the parent points out. That said, outliers, like Sublime's frontman Bradley Nowell, do exist. [0] Humour on HN is a risky business, but what I'm trying to imply is that I've known people who would find it quite reasonable to smoke two joints before they smoked two joints, and then they'd smoke two more. That's worse than a cigarette habit. Vapes, on the other hand...

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0i62GnQoo0

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