BACKGROUND Despite public awareness that tobacco secondhand smoke (SHS) is harmful, many people still assume that marijuana SHS is benign. Debates about whether smoke-free laws should include marijuana are becoming increasingly widespread as marijuana is legalized and the cannabis industry grows. Lack of evidence for marijuana SHS causing acute cardiovascular harm is frequently mistaken for evi...

AIM To investigate the association between environmental factors (perceived availability of marijuana, perceived use among friends and siblings, use of alcohol and tobacco, family structure, parental control, school performance) and lifetime prevalence and frequent and early marijuana use in high school students. METHODS We used self-reported data from 15-16 years old participants of the 2003...

Marijuana is the most commonly used illegal drug in the United States and is considered by young adults to be the illicit drug with the least risk. On the other hand, marijuana smoke contains several of the same carcinogens and co-carcinogens as the tar from tobacco, raising concerns that smoking of marijuana may be a risk factor for tobacco-related cancers. We reviewed two cohort studies and 1...

Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have passed laws that allow individuals to use marijuana for medical purposes. In this paper, I use marijuana possession arrests to estimate the impact of medical marijuana laws on marijuana usage among non-patients over the period 1988–2008. I find that these laws increase marijuana arrests among adult males by about 20 percent. The effect is stron...

BACKGROUND There is elevated prevalence of marijuana use among young adults who use tobacco, but little is known about the extent of co-use generated from surveys conducted online. The purpose of the present study was to examine past-month marijuana use and the co-use of marijuana and tobacco in a convenience sample of young adult smokers with national US coverage. METHODS Young adults age 18...

BACKGROUND As marijuana legalization and acceptability increase in the U.S., it is important to understand the potential impact on tobacco use. Accordingly, we assessed prevalence, correlates, and ten-year trends in co-use of marijuana and tobacco among U.S. adults. METHODS Data came from 378,459 adults participating in the 2003-2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, an annual, cross-se...

PROBLEM/CONDITION In the United States, marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug. In 2013, 7.5% (19.8 million) of the U.S. population aged ≥12 years reported using marijuana during the preceding month. Because of certain state-level policies that have legalized marijuana for medical or recreational use, population-based data on marijuana use and other related indicators are needed to he...

AIMS A potential unintended consequence of legalizing recreational marijuana is increased marijuana-related driving impairment. Some states where recreational marijuana is legal have begun implementing interventions to mitigate driving under the influence (DUI) of marijuana, including media campaigns to increase knowledge about DUI laws. However, little is known about the associations between k...

Recent studies have shown that information mined from Craigslist can be used for informing public health policy or monitoring risk behavior. This paper presents a text-mining method for conducting public health surveillance of marijuana use concerns in the U.S. using online classified ads in Craigslist. We scraped more than 200 thousands of rental ads in the housing categories in Craigslist and...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Gambling is common in adolescents and at-risk and problem/pathological gambling (ARPG) is associated with adverse measures of health and functioning in this population. Although ARPG commonly co-occurs with marijuana use, little is known how marijuana use influences the relationship between problem-gambling severity and health- and gambling-related measures. METHODS Survey...