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Recreational cannabis use: not so harmless!

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr Dominique Deplanque
Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, 59045 Lille cedex, France; d-deplanque@chru-lille.fr

Keywords: cannabis; recreational drug use; stroke

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Cannabis is currently the most widely used illicit drug in Western populations.¹ The question of whether or not it should remain prohibited is under debate in many European countries. Possible adverse health effects play an important role in this debate. The classical anxiolytic, sedative, analgesic, and psychedelic properties of cannabis are well known,¹ but it has recently been suggested that it may also induce cerebrovascular disease.² Now for the first time, Mateo et al have shown (this issue, see page 435) that a causal relation with cerebrovascular events is highly plausible. The major argument in favour of this is that the events only occurred during periods when the patient was consuming cannabis, and this is a major criterion of adverse drug reaction monitoring.³

Several possible mechanisms are discussed by the authors, the most likely being a drug induced vasculopathy. Others include postural hypotension with secondary impairment . . . [Full text of this article]

Related Article

Recurrent stroke associated with cannabis use

I Mateo, A Pinedo, M Gomez-Beldarrain, J M Basterretxea, and J C Garcia-Monco
J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatry 2005 76: 435-437. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]