It has long been known that drugs such as methamphetamines, cocaine, and opiates can directly affect the heart and cause abnormal rhythms such as a-fib. A new study adds marijuana to this list, finding that the drug can increase the risk by 35 percent. This debunks the common perception that cannabis may be healthy because it’s natural, or that the drug is essentially benign for most users when it is not, and may, in fact, have adverse consequences that could substantially impact users' lives. A-fib reduces the quality of life and increases the risk of stroke, heart failure, kidney disease, and dementia. Although it does not prove that marijuana causes a-fib, it does provide strong evidence of correlation—enough so that the report urges users to consider cessation to see if it has a meaningful effect on arrhythmia. By comparison, meth increased a-fib risk by 86 percent, cocaine rose by 61 percent, and opiates, by 74 percent. The report concluded that these drugs can have dramatic effects on the link between the nervous system and the heart.
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Rosenthal Center for AddictIon Studies