the man had a history of heart disease, including triple bypass surgery. but his heart problems had been stable for two years before eating the lollipop.
a followup scan showed damage to the muscle; there was less blood leaving his heart with each contraction. “he didn’t feel like he had as much get up and go,” said saunders, a chief resident in the internal medicine program at dalhousie university.
with pot-laced edibles set to become legal this fall, the case could be a harbinger of many more to come.
marijuana use is becoming ever more popular among middle-aged and older canadians, just as baby boomers enter the age when they’re most at risk for heart disease. many are naïve or never-before users; others are coming back to weed after having used in their youth.
“in our patient’s case, likely the cardiovascular event came during sudden and unexpected strain on the body with hallucinations,” saunders and her co-author, dr. robert stevenson, wrote in their report, “marijuana lollipop-induced myocardial infarction.”
the component largely responsible for any effects on the heart is thc, which, even in a moderate dose in a naïve user, particularly an older one, “can produce significant toxicity,” dr. neal benowitz, chief of clinical pharmacology at the university of california, san francisco, wrote in a related editorial.