WASHINGTON DC, USA, Wednesday April 5, 2017 – New research has revealed that cannabis is harmful to cardiovascular health and increases the chance of early death irrespective of related factors such as smoking tobacco.
Data taken from the records of more than 20 million people at over 1,000 US hospitals found that those who used the herb had a 26 percent greater chance of suffering a stroke than those who did not, as well as a 10 percent higher chance of having a heart attack.
The findings indicate that there is something intrinsic about cannabis that can damage the proper functioning of the human heart.
This conclusion remained unchanged after taking into account unhealthy factors known to affect many cannabis smokers, such as poor diet, obesity, alcohol overindulgence and tobacco smoking.
According to Dr Aditi Kalla, Cardiology Fellow at the Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia and the study’s lead author: “Even when we corrected for known risk factors, we still found a higher rate of both stroke and heart failure in these patients, so that leads us to believe that there is something else going on besides just obesity or diet-related cardiovascular side effects.
“It’s important for physicians to know these effects so we can better educate patients.”
The researchers analysed the records of young and middle-aged patients aged between 18 and 55 who were discharged from 1,000 hospitals in 2009 and 2010 at a time when marijuana use was still illegal in most states.
The study identified 316,000 patients, or 1.5 percent, where marijuana use was diagnosed in the notes.
Their cardiovascular disease rates were compared to those who did not use cannabis, and the difference was revealed.
The research, which was published last week at a meeting of the American College of Cardiology in Washington DC, built on previous research in cell cultures that has shown that heart muscle cells have cannabis receptors relevant to contractility, or squeezing ability, suggesting that those receptors might be one mechanism through which marijuana use could affect the cardiovascular system.
The Ministry of Education is being asked to set clear guidelines for the teaching of sex education in the island’s schools.
During a fiery hour-long television debate Sunday night on the contentious issue of comprehensive sexuality education (CSE), Chairman of the children’s charity ProtEqt Children’s Foundation Dr Veronica Evelyn stopped just short of describing the teaching of the subject as a free-for-all.
Dr Veronica Evelyn
Evelyn, whose charity and advocacy group works in schools across the island, charged that there was no policy on what should be taught, or no consistent content, and the teachers lacked the proper training needed to deliver the health and family life education (HFLE) programme.
“The question is who is teaching . . . because in the schools you have health and family life educators who have been trained, but what goes on on the ground is . . . many times in order to just fill space in a timetable, if a teacher doesn’t have enough periods for the week, they are put to teacher HFLE,” the sociologist said on the CBC television show, The People’s Business.
“In our schools – and I am saying this without any fear of contradiction, I have worked with the schools – you have persons who have not been trained who are delivering this content . . . and not only so [but] because of a lack of accountability, sometimes it is abused,” she added.
CSE is one of the United Nations’ key strategies for combating the spread of HIV and AIDS among children and young people, and is described by the UN agency UNESCO as “an age-appropriate, culturally relevant approach to teaching about sex and relationships by providing scientifically accurate, realistic, non-judgemental information”.
UNESCO says that by adopting a comprehensive strategy, CSE emphasizes “an approach to sexuality education that encompasses the full range of information, skills and values to enable young people to exercise their sexual and reproductive rights and to make decisions about their health and sexuality”.
However, it has sparked controversy here, with Government legislator and church leader David Durant recently charging that CSE was “one of the greatest assaults on the health and innocence of children” and has an almost excessive focus on teaching children how to obtain sexual pleasure or gratification in various ways, including masturbation, anal and oral sex.
David Durant
“I am appealing to the Ministry of Education and the PTA not to allow comprehensive sexuality education to enter our school system. It should not be embraced here because comprehensive sexuality education is one of the greatest assaults on the health and innocence of children. This is because unlike traditional sexual education, comprehensive sexuality education uses explicit material to promote promiscuity and high risk sexual behaviour to children as healthy and normal,” he said in his contribution to the debate on the 2017/2018 Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure.
“I do not think it is anything we should impose on our six, seven, eight, nine and ten-year-old children and even children a little older. The main goal of comprehensive sexuality education is to change the sexual norms of society. I am appealing that we do not allow it to have a firm root in our society,” he stressed.
This led to a stinging response from George Griffith, a social worker and former executive director of the Barbados Family Planning Association, who wrote in a column in Barbados TODAY that Durant’s opposition to the subject was “rooted in a set of deep-seated myths and downright misinformation based on denial and failure to accept that in this day and age, our children cannot be insulated from the realities of today’s 21st century world”.
George Griffith
“I make bold to say that persons who seek to deny our children access to CSE on the basis of their denial, fear, homophobic disposition or warped religions beliefs are doing them a great disservice,” Griffith wrote.
The former BFPA chief was among the five-member panel appearing on Sunday night’s television show. However, it was left to the association’s Youth Development Officer Keriann Hurley to repel many of the charges – both direct and inferred – including concerns by Ambrose Carter, the Pure Sex Centre founder, whose organization promotes abstinence before marriage.
Keriann Hurley
Carter said research by his organization had revealed that 87 per cent of 11-plus students preferred to wait until marriage to have sex, and questioned whether CSE covered this “full circle of truth”.
“So, they want to wait for marriage, who is teaching them that? You asked about the real life practices? I am asking about the way of teaching. You hearing about all the sub-cultures and these things and the things that are bad that are happening. So who is bringing the positive? If the Barbados Family Planning Association is charged with the responsibility of teaching health and sexuality education to our children . . . is the Barbados Family Planning Association also encouraging children, or telling them that sex in marriage is also an option?” he asked.
Ambrose Carter
However, Hurley told the panel, which also included President of the Youth Advocacy and Outreach Movement of the BFPA Kamal Clarke, that the children got the full truth about sex.
“We do give the full circle of truth and we do definitely make sure that all of the information allows every person whether you are religious or not to be able to make an informed decision and be able to stick to your personal value system,” she said.
Despite the strong differences, all the panellists agreed there was need for sex education in schools, but it ought to be delivered in an age-appropriate manner.
