The unknown health impacts of cannabis smoke – #podcast

It’s been five years since cannabis was legalized in Canada yet we still know very little about the effects of cannabis smoke on our health that’s because there’s barely any Research into its toxicity despite what governments have promised we do know lots about the effects of THC and CBD which are chemical compounds

Found in cannabis but our understanding of the smoke itself is largely based on assumptions about tobacco smoke Jameson burco was a financial reporter with the globe who’s covered the Cannabis industry extensively he dug into what we know about the safety of cannabis and what we don’t I’m Cheryl Sutherland and this is the

Decibel from the Globe and Mail Jameson thanks so much for being here today it’s my pleasure thanks for having me okay let’s start by defining what we’re talking about here like how much do we know about the damage caused by smoking cannabis versus consuming it

Like a gummy or a drink for example well we know a lot actually about the damage caused or you know impacts I should say caused by cannabis when it’s just consumed without combustion which is to say you know without smoking or vaping it because so much of the research and

The warnings and the concern frankly in the lead-up to legalization was what the cannabinoids the THC and CBD and there’s actually you know hundreds of others but those are the two big ones all due to your body and that’s more of like a psychological mental health kind of a

Question absolutely important but that’s where I would say 99 plus of the research really you know because of every journalist is hesitant to say 100 of anything right but absolutely the Lion’s Share has been on that area and the actual you would think more easily and readily available

Analysis of just you know this is a physical act you’re doing this is something that affects your physical body the cells that make up you as a living organism and we really have no idea what it actually does we can assume but that’s not really all that great

When you’re talking about science and millions of Canadians and all of the impacts of you know what this is now you know a legal product okay so we’re talking here about cannabis smoke right inhaling cannabis so what data do we actually have on that part of it do we

Know anything about the harms there there was one study and I stress one study that was done it was done in 2007 based on tests that occurred in 2005 that was testing product that was harvested by Prairie plant systems which for a long time was the only legal

Producer of cannabis in the in this country and really globally in 2004 that data actually found found that there was much more of you know the typical harmful chemicals like hydrocarbons or arsenic or ammonia all the stuff that we know is in tobacco smoke but in multiples higher levels so you know

People often use the argument right that you know I might smoke one joint at night but a tobacco smoker is going to smoke 15 to 20 cigarettes a day and so you know I’m I’m getting 1 20th of the harm but let’s say like ammonia for

Example just 20 times as much ammonia in a joint as there is in a cigarette so you’re actually getting about the same amount of ammonia if you smoke that one joint versus 20 cigarettes so and remember that is two decade old data I want to talk about the public perception

About cannabis smoking because anecdotally I I hear people say that cannabis smoking is better than tobacco smoke but do we have any information on that like what do we know about what people think about it we actually have polling data that confirms your view which is that most people do not

Consider cannabis to be as harmful Health Canada does this survey every year specifically of cannabis consumers 95 percent of respondents said that tobacco is at least moderately harmful when smoking so in 95 you can call that pretty much everybody only 50 said the same thing about cannabis which is

Astounding and people get really really emotional and heated whenever anybody raises the possibility that cannabis is in any way harmful even if the you know obvious case of you know your lighting dried plant matter on fire and inhaling the smoke into your body there’s no way

That that is you know quote unquote good for you it’s just a question of how bad but if you say it’s bad at all you get yourself into a pretty heated argument where does this perception come from that cannabis smoke might not be as harmful as tobacco smoke it’s about

Cherry picking I think okay you know like they’ll cherry pick there’s in fact only one study I can think of although the people on the other side of this argument would probably be able to dredge up maybe a handful that show things like the incidence of lung cancer

Say among even heavy cannabis consumers is the same as non-cannabis consumers and even if there’s you know a hundred studies that refute every one study that shows that people really cling to that results and they’ll say things like you know the the fact that there’s cannabinoids in it will will heal the

Lungs and make it so that yeah the smoke is damaging the lungs but then the cannabinoids get in there and they do their magic endocannabinoid system thing that they do and it’s like yeah you know that doesn’t sound like something I’d read in a medical textbook but you’re

Entitled to your beliefs so you talked about a couple of studies there have they been discredited or are they are they still accurate it’s difficult to discredit them because they’re frankly not really credited in the first place right like you can’t get them peer reviewed and that’s an important point

To stress right like when people ask me you know did you look outside of Canada to see if maybe globally there had been some research done and you know you have to recall that we’re the actually the only developed country in the world that allows that kind of research to happen

At the federal level people will point to all the U.S states that have legalized it right but the kind of thing that requires testing to be done that’s federally regulated in the U.S so if you’re a scientist in the U.S you want to do this kind of research it’s

Technically possible but it is prohibitively difficult okay so in Canada we’ve had legal cannabis for five years and at the time governments promised to fund studies in order to understand the harms what happened to that it seems to have just become this political Hot Potato where all these people these and it’s

Important to know like these are not prohibitionists by any measure these are some of the Ardent supporters of legalization some of the champions in fact of legalization and their you know noted experts in their field and neuroscientists and doctors and Physicians and that you know certainly not get your kids skateboarding off the

Sidewalks kind of people and so they’ve had all these meetings with various levels of government Federal and provincial and based on what they have told me and what I’ve been able to confirm is that they get this same reaction every time they get oh something definitely has to be done

About this but you know it’s that person over there or that level of government down there or up there that you need to talk to and then they’ll go talk to them and they’ll say oh no no that’s the person you want to talk to and and so

Everyone says something has to happen they agree but then nobody actually wants to take responsibility to make it happen and then you know politically we know the Liberals really saw this as one of the few very clear-cut victories and delivering on a promise that they did

And in many ways it is Parliament has now passed bill c-45 which will legalize and strictly regulate access to cannabis we will soon have a new system in place one that keeps cannabis out of the hands of our kids and keeps profits away from organized crime but at the same time

It’s done for them right like this file is closed and the political Capital that would be required to reopen it even if it’s just a little you sort of have to ask yourself if you put your you know political hat on is why would they bother expending resources on something

That they could easily just sweep under the rug this is a basic question but why is it important to study this it’s about informing consumers really it’s and and I mean I appreciate the question because I encountered that a lot when people would say well you know why don’t we

Just assume that it is unhealthy and it’s because in an absence of verified scientific analysis people fill in the gaps themselves and they’ll either fill it in with you know their preconceived notions of oh you know I never smoked anything and I know that smoking it is

Unhealthy and I’ll just leave it at that but then you know you still give space to the whole other side side of the argument to say well you know there’s these magic cannabinoids that are so beneficial to our health and maybe maybe that’s true but let’s find out for sure

Okay so if the government isn’t doing this research does that mean we’re expecting the Cannabis industry to do it themselves like who is supposed to be doing this research if it’s not the government see that’s the really funny thing because a lot of people say like

Oh you know the industry makes so much money and it’s like well you know they they make a lot of money but they also and you know he could have a whole separate episode about the Follies of the literally billions of dollars that were effectively flushed down toilets in

The early couple years of the industry but I mean even just for the sake of argument let’s say the industry is flush let’s say they make just as much money as alcohol and tobacco which you know they’re not certainly crying for handouts from anybody right now

Would we ask you know a Distillery or a big beer producer to fund research on liver damage you know we might ask them we might force them with laws and regulations but should we expect them to do it voluntarily I don’t think so I mean that is just saying hey why don’t

You go against all your promotional activities and all of your you know marketing efforts and nobody’s going to want to do that we’ll be right back so is any research at all happening right now in Canada when it comes to cannabis smoke there was a limited study

That was done in 2022 Health Canada actually presented it as this whole like oh we’ve updated our data we have this 2022 data that’s all new and I took it to lapse I said is this true is this all you know above board they said well yeah

We did it it’s super limited it was actually a trial of one product in one specific instance and they only tested for a handful of different things so yeah we do have some new data but it’s hardly enough to draw conclusions in fact the only conclusions we can draw is

That comparing that data to what was tested in 2005 shows that we’ve actually seen an increase in the amount of things like ammonia and other toxic chemicals which frankly didn’t strike me as that surprising considering how much more effort over the last 20 years has gone into maximizing the efficiency of the

Production process and making a purer stronger more potent product so we’ve been focusing on on the research that there’s very scarce research here but what about testing because in the case of tobacco there are regulations there are laws testing requirements does anything exist for cannabis or how does

That compare that’s a really good question because there is an international body that’s responsible for not just you know cannabis but all sorts of different products and it’s based in the US and they do have a system of standards and processes that are applied to various types of like

Cannabis production and testing for certain things like pesticides but they don’t have one yet for testing emissions and toxicity because no one’s asked for it why why because we haven’t asked for it no one else is really in a position to ask for it right because they can’t

Do the tests in the U.S okay technically speaking Uruguay could do the test if they wanted but simple lack of resources is the issue down there I don’t believe they have accredited Labs that can do this kind of testing they tend to Outsource that to countries that don’t

Have a legalized market so yeah we don’t know really how to do it though I have spoken to a number of scientists who say at the bare minimum we can apply the same testing standards that are codified in the law of the tobacco act right now

As a starting off point and then refine them as we continue to do more tests but the fact is we have to get to Step One first right which is somebody willing to front the cost to do the tests and right now no one’s willing to do that what are

Experts asking for in this case in terms to actually get to that point like what do they think is a solution to getting some sort of action on that they need about a million bucks oh simply put they need about a million bucks for lab stat

To do the research put out the results and I mean it doesn’t necessarily have to be the kind of thing where every single Grandma pop produced in the country needs to go about this testing you know it’s it’s not as though every noodle in a mac and cheese box is tested

Either right like they they don’t do that for even the tests assist for cannabis right now you know they don’t test the whole crop they taste a selection of it and and it’s assumed the rest is the same so that would be the starting off point you know get some

Testing done particularly for these new products on the market maybe people will still buy it probably they will but at least they’ll know a little more clearly what they’re actually buying and what it’s going to do to them in terms of the business side we know that the legal

Industry is struggling big operators like tilray and canopy growth are still not profitable you know in terms of like on the storefront area walking on the street I I see many closures like in Ontario over 200 Cannabis stores closed last year I guess I’m just wondering would the added cost of testing and

Regulation make the illicit Market more attractive because the products might be cheaper on that side oh from a price perspective maybe but I don’t see this really factoring into the price of legal cannabis if anything it may impact like the packaging say like I know where the

You know we made a lot of hey out of the fact that we’re the first country in the world that has individual warnings on individual cigarettes even if we go as far as that for cannabis the cost of that wouldn’t be tremendous and like you’re right to point out price because

I do think that that’s the main driver just as it is for most things right like if you can get a better deal on your cannabis the illicit Market yeah you’re likely to go into the illicit Market to buy it but if price is about the same I

Really struggle to see packaging and warnings on the packaging being like you know some cannabis consumer saying oh you know I think I’m gonna go buy this cannabis because it has beautiful flowers on it instead of you know pictures of a diseased lung like I just

I like to have more faith in the rationality of the average consumer than that I guess so we’ve been talking about the harms but cannabis can also be used as a medicine it can be used to treat epilepsy for example but it’s not prescribed that often by doctors do you

Think that having more research might change that absolutely that’s one of the main reasons I think that this is a good idea to do I mean more information is always better than less information I think that that’s you know an absolute truism of society in general but for

Things that can be used as medicines that’s definitely the issue I mean when I was covering the Cannabis industry in its very early days I found that understandably doctors were resistant to prescribe things that they didn’t know a lot about that was their main issue is

Like what we don’t know what’s in it we don’t know what it does so the more that we can say it does X Y and Z then yeah they’re going to be able to comfortably prescribe it in situations that they feel it makes sense and you know for

Those that say it’s still harmful why would doctors prescribe it at all I would just ask them to Google Oxycontin and see you know the the results that come up there you know it’s it’s all about that cost benefit analysis right it’s going to help a lot of patients and

Does to your point currently many millions of patients in fact but sure there’s harms to it too just as there can be for virtually every other thing that you ingest as a human being I just want to end on something a little bit more broad because you know people still

Drink there have been new regulations that come out about about drinking in Canada people still smoke tobacco even though we know very much the harms of it I just wonder would having this data on cannabis would that make a meaningful difference to Consumers Health in the

End I think so I think just having that awareness right I mean look at all the data we have on Tobacco and I’ll go back to that survey that Health Canada does every year 95 of cannabis consumers saying that this is actually that we acknowledge the tobacco smoke is at

Least moderately harmful so if we can get something similar in terms of consumer awareness yeah you’re absolutely right people will still choose to do it and they may have lots of perfectly defensible reasonable reasons for doing so but if you look at on the margins of people who might not

Do it if they have that information those are the people that this kind of work needs to be done for because really ensuring that consumers can make informed decisions that is the key role of us as journalists as governments as Protectors of Public Health and as the

Whole basis of taking something out of the illicit world and bringing it into regular civil society and so if we can do that it’s going to make people overall I think feel a lot better about the choices we made in the past Jamison this has been truly eye-opening thank you so

Much for coming on I very much enjoyed being here that’s it for today I’m Cheryl Sutherland Jay Coburn helped produce this episode Nagi Nia is our summer producer our producers are Madeline White and Rachel Levy McLaughlin David Crosby edits the show Adrian Chung is our senior producer and Angela pachenza is our executive

Editor thanks for listening and I’ll talk to you tomorrow

It has been five years since the legalization of cannabis in Canada but we still know very little about health impacts from cannabis smoke. Almost no research has been done, despite government promises, so scientists and experts say we need more data so consumers can make an informed decision.

Jameson Berkow is a reporter for the Globe who has covered the cannabis industry extensively. He’s on the show today to explain why this knowledge gap exists and how we can close it.

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