Nowadays, most teenagers enjoy vaping weed or marijuana but it can cause some serious side effects. A recent study shows that these young adults have twice the risk of experiencing wheezing in the chest right after they use a vape to smoke weed as compared to an e-cigarette or a regular cigarette.
This study was published recently in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
The study was conducted by Carol Boyd who is the co-director at the Center for the Study of Drugs, Alcohol, Smoking & Health, University of Michigan. She mentioned that the researchers expected to see worse outcomes in terms of respiratory issues in these teens who smoke cigarettes and e-cigarettes.
She mentioned that smoking cigarettes have dangerous outcomes for the lungs and the overall health of the body. However, these teenagers show worse results in the case of vaping weed. She also said that most of the teens who intake nicotine also use marijuana. Therefore, parents should consider all sorts of vaping dangerous for health the same way they treat alcohol and drugs.
Recently, researchers identified a deadly disease linked to vaping called EVALI. This disease occurs when the person faces some lung injury due to using a vape or e-cigarette. Back in 2019, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified this lethal disease. At that time, the CDC observed the pattern of healthy people hospitalized due to a sudden infection in the lungs. The researchers quickly figured out that vaping was causing lung injuries in these teens which led to infections. The main culprit in these cases was Vitamin E acetate which is a major component of vaping cartridges. This sticky and oily substance helps to change the consistency of the oil in these products.
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The CDC also found that most of the people who got lung injuries used marijuana. It contains a psychoactive compound called THC which can trigger this disease. Data from the CDC shows that 84% of EVALI cases occurred due to the use of products containing cannabis. Moreover, the latest data from February 2020 shows that EVALI caused 68 deaths in Columbia and 29 states of the US.
The latest study looked at the data gathered by the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health study over two years. This study included 15,000 young adult participants aged from 12 to 17 years. The researchers asked these individuals about their vaping experience over the past month. Moreover, they also inquired about the total duration for which these teenagers vaped marijuana during their lifetime. They asked about some symptoms as well including wheezing in the chest, limited speech, disturbance in sleep, wheezing of whistling while doing a physical activity such as exercise, and dry cough during the night without any infection.
The researchers found that the teenagers who used weed experienced all of these symptoms. Meanwhile, these findings were only true for vaping weed and not for using e-cigarettes or regular cigarettes. The researchers suggest that this practice causes several concerns and fatal lung disease. Therefore, parents should look out for their children to prevent this disease.
