A recent study suggests a connection between increased rates of anxiety and depression and cigarette and cannabis usage. Between 2020 and 2022, researchers examined the substance use behaviors of 53,843 US people using data from the COVID-19 Citizens Health Study. Nearly 1.8 times as many co-users of both substances as non-users experienced these mental health issues. Although a connection between the two has not been shown, the concurrent use of both drugs suggests possible hazards to mental health.
Key details
1.6% of those polled admitted to using both cigarettes and cannabis, while 26.5% and 28.3% of them said they had anxiety and/or depression.Anxiety and depression were reported by non-users of tobacco or cannabis at rates of 10.6% and 11.2%, respectively.
According to the study, those who use both tobacco and cannabis concurrently are around 1.8 times more likely to experience anxiety and sadness than non-users.
According to a new study by Nhung Nguyen of the University of California, San Francisco, USA, and colleagues, people who use both tobacco and cannabis are more likely to experience anxiety and depression than people who use tobacco only or people who use neither substance.
Cannabis and tobacco are two of the most widely used drugs in the world, and joint use has increased as cannabis use becomes more widely accepted.
53,843 US people who took part in online questionnaires as part of the COVID-19 Citizens Health Study, which gathered data from 2020 to 2022, were included in the current study’s analysis of data on substance use and mental health.
In total, 4.9% of individuals said they only used cigarettes, 6.9% said they only used cannabis, and 1.6% said they used both. Anxiety and depression were reported by 26.5% and 28.3% of those who used both substances, respectively, compared to 10.6% and 11.2% of those who did not use either tobacco or cannabis.
The study discovered that co-users had a roughly 1.8 times higher risk of various mental health issues than non-users. When compared to tobacco use alone, co-usage and cannabis use alone were both linked to a higher risk of experiencing anxiety.
The cause cannot be established by this study. But the authors come to the conclusion that combining the use of tobacco and cannabis is linked to poor mental health, and they recommend incorporating mental health services with programs for quitting both.
Both smoking cigarettes and using cannabis are associated with lowered mental wellbeing.
NN is funded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health, through the UCSF Clinical and Translational Science Institute (grant UL1 TR001872-06), the California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (projects T31FT1564 and T32KT5071), and other sources.
The NIH awarded GM, JO, and MP grant number 5U2CEB021881 in order to fund the Eureka Research Platform. The COVID-19 Citizen Science Study is supported by Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute contract COVID-2020C2-10761 to GM, JO, and MP the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation contract INV-017206 to GM, JO, and MP, and grants 75N91020C00039 from NIH/NCI and 3U2CEB021881-05S1 from NIH/NIBIB to GM, JO, and MP.
