Legal MJ States Had Fewer Vaping-Related Lung Injuries, Study Finds

People in states where recreational marijuana is legal were significantly less likely to experience vaping-related lung injuries than those in states where cannabis is prohibited, according to a new study published in an American Medical Association journal.

The finding seems to affirm what many reform advocates said during the peak of the e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury (EVALI) crisis last year. With thousands being hospitalized over EVALI, it became clear that contaminated vape cartridges were the source and that contamination was more common in illicit, unregulated markets where consumers can’t walk into retail stores and buy tested and labeled marijuana products.

By analyzing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data on EVALI cases, the prevalence of e-cigarette use and the population in each state from June 2019 to January 2020, researchers were able to confirm that.

The research letter, published by the JAMA Network Open on Monday, shows that states with recreational marijuana shops had 1.7 EVALI cases per million population compared to 8.1 cases per million in prohibition states. There was no statistically significant difference between criminalized and medical cannabis states, which experienced 8.8 cases per million population.
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