‘They vape because they think it’s safer, but that’s not necessarily the case.’
More Canadian and U.S. teenagers than ever before are turning to vaping cannabis instead of smoking the drug.
Cannabis vaping by teens doubled between 2013 and 2020 despite the unknown long-term effects — or risk — of using the electronic devices to get high, according to a report by the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics.
JAMA Pediatrics researchers, after analyzing 17 studies involving almost 200,000 teens in Canada and the U.S., discovered the drastic uptick of the percentage of teens using vaping devices, according to the news website NPR. They also found that teens who say they vaped cannabis within the last 30 days jumped a whopping 6.8 per cent — from 1.6 per cent to 8.4 per cent — during the same timeframe.
The JAMA Pediatrics report suggests “a possible explanation for the upward trajectory in the prevalence of cannabis vaping observed in our study timeframe is the increasing uptake of vaping products generally used among youth and young adults, widening access to cannabis vaping products through legalization of cannabis, and the decrease in perceived risk of harm toward cannabis in the last decade.”
Still, the increase is startling, given that the effects vaping has on the body, particularly the respiratory system, are still somewhat unknown. But teens seem to believe vaping is safer than smoking dried cannabis.
The GrowthOp – 2021-11-01.
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