It takes some balls to say weed doubles the risk of stroke, and to not control the study for tobacco or alcohol use. New Zealand professor of clinical neurology Alan Barber: You sir, have some balls.
Barber presented his “pot doubles strokes risk” findings at the the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference 2013 this week. There are no links to the actual paper, but in the presentation and associated press release, Barber suggests that cannabis use may double the stroke risk in young adults.
He came to this conclusion by testing the pee of 160 stroke patients between the ages of 18 and 55. Sixteen percent of the patients tested positive for cannabis. “These patients usually had no other vascular risk factors apart from tobacco, alcohol and other drug usage,” Barber said.
But wait, isn’t alcohol and tobacco and other drug use a HUGE vascular risk factor? I mean, even caffeine increases risk of stroke. Even the press release admits, “the association [between weed and stroke] is confounded because all but one of the stroke patients who were cannabis users also used tobacco regularly.”
Still, “We believe it is the cannabis use and not tobacco,” states Professor Barber.
It’s nice to believe things, but belief isn’t science, Doc.
