Do You Have the Heart for Marijuana? – Cannabis Business Executive

Do you have the heart to safely smoke pot? Maybe not, a growing body of medical reports suggests.

Currently, increased smoking of marijuana in public, even in cities like New York where recreational use remains illegal (though no longer prosecuted), has reinforced a popular belief that this practice is safe, even health-promoting.

“Many people think that they have a free pass to smoke marijuana,” Dr. Salomeh Keyhani, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told me. “I even heard a suggestion on public radio that tobacco companies should switch to marijuana because then they’d be selling life instead of selling death.”

But if you already are a regular user of recreational marijuana or about to become one, it would be wise to consider medical evidence that contradicts this view, especially for people with underlying cardiovascular diseases.