CNN
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Having great friends you hang out with often is a blessing, but according to “B,” a 43-year-old Atlanta resident who CNN is not identifying for privacy reasons, sometimes that happiness can overflow.
“I love champagne bubbles and having champagne on the terrace with friends on a Sunday is my ideal day,” says B. “But my friends are always coming over, so I end up drinking a whole bottle of wine, even on weekday nights. I wish I’d invested in boxed wine, especially during the pandemic.”
Currently, Person B has abstained from alcohol and has started consuming marijuana gummies when she wants to get drunk.
Substituting cannabis for alcohol is on the rise in America. In fact, a recent survey found that for the first time in history, daily use of any form of cannabis among Americans has surpassed daily use of alcohol.
Of course, in terms of pure numbers, there are many more people who drink alcohol occasionally than those who use marijuana, which is currently legal for recreational use in 24 states and Washington, D.C., and for medical use in 38 states and D.C.
Still, about 18 million people ages 12 and older will report using marijuana daily or nearly daily in 2022, compared with about 15 million who said they used alcohol the same frequently, according to the study, which analyzed the most recent data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, an annual government survey.
For B, quitting alcohol was essential. Regular heavy drinking with friends was causing her suffering – increasing hangovers and morning anxiety, affecting her work performance and her ability to enjoy one of life’s pleasures – athletics.
“I’m really healthy, I eat healthy and I exercise, but I just didn’t feel right,” says B. “One day I was lying on the couch and my heart was beating so hard I thought it was going to jump out of my chest.”
Mr. B had a family history of both alcoholism and heart disease: “I had relatives who died of heart attacks in their own driveway.”
Simply drinking less was not an option for her.
“I’ve tried to moderate my drinking in the past, but it’s hard when people are drinking around me,” said B. “So I decided to quit drinking completely. My friends were really supportive, and it was easier than I thought it would be.”
However, after a few months of total abstinence, Ms. B. began trying cannabis gummies and found them easy to pair with a non-alcoholic drink or two.
“I don’t like getting high,” says B. “I’ll just snip off a quarter of a gummy candy to help me decompress after a long day at work. If I’m out partying with friends and I know I’ll be there for a long time, I’ll eat half a can or a whole one.”
Is using marijuana instead of alcohol a healthier option? Experts say it depends.
“Questioning your relationship with alcohol is a very healthy tendency,” said Carol Boyd, founding director of the Center for Drug, Alcohol, Smoking and Health Research at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who was not involved in the analysis.
“Moderate alcohol consumption is known to carry health risks, and the risks increase with increasing alcohol intake,” Boyd said in an email.
Research has shown that just one drink a day can raise blood pressure, cause dangerous arrhythmias and even shrink the brain — just some of the many pitfalls associated with alcohol consumption, including increased cancer risk.
Binge drinking, defined as consuming four or more drinks within two hours for women (five or more drinks for men), has increased during the pandemic. Women are more likely to be drinking excessively, and twice as many of them have been taken to emergency rooms during the pandemic than before. In fact, alcohol-related death rates for both men and women increased 26% between 2019 and 2020, the first year of the pandemic.
At first glance, the harms of marijuana seem just as worrisome: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cannabis use before age 25 can cause permanent brain damage in young people, wreaking havoc on their ability to learn, remember, solve problems and pay attention.
A February 2024 study found that using any amount of marijuana increases the risk of stroke by 42% and heart attack by 25%, even if you have no history of heart disease and have never smoked or vaped cigarettes.
Cannabis has also been linked to an increased risk of irregular heart rhythms such as atrial fibrillation, myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle), spasms of the arteries in the heart, and heart failure.
But many participants in these cardiovascular studies smoke or inhale marijuana rather than ingest it, said Dr. Peter Grinspoon, a primary care physician and cannabis specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and author of “Seeing Beyond the Smoke: A Cannabis Specialist Uncovers the Truth About Marijuana.”
“No doctor would recommend smoking marijuana unless someone is in acute pain or is undergoing chemotherapy for cancer and wants faster pain relief through inhalation,” Grinspoon said.
Burning anything, whether it’s tobacco or cannabis, produces toxic compounds that are harmful to your health when inhaled. “It’s not just the effects of marijuana, it’s the effects of the drug,” said Dr. Beth Cohen, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and a marijuana researcher.
“Cannabis smoke contains toxins, carcinogens, and particulate matter that have been linked to cancer, lung damage, and cardiovascular disease,” Cohen said in an email. “As with any substance, there is potential harm, so we would expect to see a dose-response. That’s why I’m particularly concerned about the rise in daily or near-daily use of cannabis.”
In fact, marijuana smoke may even be more harmful than cigarettes because users retain the hot smoke in their lungs longer to maximize the high: A March 2021 study by Boyd found that young people were twice as likely to experience a “wheezing or whistling sound” in their chest after smoking marijuana than after smoking or e-cigarettes.
“New data shows that “Secondhand marijuana smoke can be just as dangerous as primary smoking,” said Robert Page II. “These drugs are not safe for people with chronic conditions, but they are safe for people with chronic conditions,” the professor of clinical pharmacy and physical therapy at the University of Colorado’s Skaggs School of Pharmacy told CNN in a previous interview.
But there are plenty of options beyond inhaling marijuana smoke, Grinspoon says: “Topicals like oils, lotions and skin patches, suppositories, tinctures that you can put under the tongue or in tea, edibles, and more. You don’t have to smoke marijuana.”
But there’s a problem: Research into edibles, like baked goods, candies, and drinks, and other ways to consume cannabis, is still in its early stages, and it’s unclear whether it has any long-term effects on the human body beyond getting an unpleasant high if taken in large amounts all at once.
“The risks of regular use of edible cannabis are still unknown, so it’s unclear whether this trend will ultimately be beneficial for health,” Boyd said in an email. “Regulations are uneven, products vary, and use remains illegal under federal law. We need better data!”
Doug Foto/iStockphoto/Getty Images
Cannabis gummies, candies, and other edibles haven’t been thoroughly studied, so the long-term side effects are unknown.
B lives in Georgia, where only medical marijuana is allowed, so he started using hemp-based gummies that are infused with delta-9, the most abundant form of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the compound in the cannabis plant that gets you high. The synthetic form used in edibles is called delta-9 THC-O acetate.
With the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill, which removed the narcotic plant from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s list of controlled substances, Ms. B can now purchase various brands of hemp gummies almost anywhere, including her local gas station.
“First of all, I want to congratulate her for giving up alcohol,” said Grinspoon, who also serves as executive director of Physicians for Drug Policy Reform, which works on marijuana, psychedelics and drug control in general.
“But the hemp products she buys from places like gas stations and liquor stores are completely unregulated, sprayed with synthetic cannabinoids like delta 8, delta 9 and delta 10, and are very cheap to produce.
“It’s really dangerous for a myriad of reasons,” he says. “We don’t know what’s in these new synthetic cannabinoids. There are all kinds of industrial by-products, all kinds of mixtures of compounds, or extremely high or low doses of compounds. It’s the Wild West out there.”
According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, “converting the cannabinoids found in hemp into synthetic products like Delta 8 requires potentially harmful chemicals, and production may take place in uncontrolled or unsanitary environments.”
Of the nearly 2,400 calls about Delta-8 made to national poison centers in 2021-2022, 70% required medical attention and 8% were hospitalized, according to the FDA. One child died.
A June 2018 review of existing literature on synthetic cannabis found that it can cause more severe side effects, including difficulty breathing, elevated blood pressure, chest pain, increased heart rate, cognitive impairment, anxiety, agitation, suicidal thoughts, and even death.
“More people using marijuana is not in itself a good thing,” Grinspoon said.
But if they intend to use it as a substitute for alcohol, “people should buy marijuana or hemp cannabis products from legal, regulated dispensaries in the states where the products are sold,” he added. You will be tracked from start to finish and tested along the way.”
If you’re buying marijuana or hemp online or from a smoke-supply store, choose products that are labeled to show they’ve paid an independent, outside company to guarantee the purity of the product, he said.
“Another piece of advice for people who want to use marijuana is to educate yourself,” he said. “Don’t smoke it. Start with very small amounts and work your way up. Don’t use it before driving. And buy it from a medical marijuana dispensary or a legal, well-regulated store. It’s much safer than unregulated hemp-derived products.”
Editor’s note: If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts or struggling with mental health issues, please call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline on 988 to connect with a trained counsellor or 988 Lifeline website.
