A recent study in JAMA Network Open, reported on in The New York Times, found that individuals who received hospital-based care (i.e., an emergency department visit or hospitalization) for cannabis use disorder (CUD) were 2.8 times more likely than the general population to die within 5 years.
The study, based on data from 11.6 million Canadians in Ontario between 2006 and 2021, found 3.5% of those who received hospital-based care for CUD had died within 5 years, which was 6 times higher than the 0.6% rate among the general population. After adjusting for sociodemographic variables and health conditions, “there continued to be a 3-fold increased risk of death,” the study noted.
After assessing the specific causes of death, the authors explained, “individuals with hospital-based CUD care were at increased risk of all investigated types of death but at particularly elevated risk of death by suicide, trauma, opioid, alcohol, and other drug poisoning and lung cancer relative to the general population.” For example, individuals who received hospital-based care for CUD were 9.7 times more likely to have died by suicide, 5.0 times more likely to have died from opioid poisoning, and 4.6 times more likely to have died from trauma.
In a commentary about the study, Dr. Jodi Gilman, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and a member of the FDPS Leadership Council, said, “it is important not to misinterpret findings suggesting no significant acceleration in adverse outcomes after cannabis legalization as a statement that policy does not matter. Policy does matter; allowing unfettered commercial markets to exist exposes more individuals to a greater variety of readily available, high-potency cannabis products.”
In a separate commentary about the study, Drs. Laura Bierut and Fang Fang said, “though gaps remain in our knowledge about the health effects of cannabis use, the current evidence is enough to sound an alarm; cannabis is addictive; cannabis use disorder is on the rise; and those affected by cannabis use disorder are at an increased risk of premature death.”