Teenagers Who Smoke Blunts (Cigars Filled With Marijuana) More Likely to Smoke, Vape

Blunts are cigars that have been hollowed out and filled with marijuana, and as a result, they expose smokers to both marijuana and nicotine addiction. Increasingly, middle and high school students are smoking blunts, according to a new study, “Trends and Factors Related to Blunt Use in Middle and High School Students, 2010–2020,” in the July issue of Pediatrics (published online June 14). Researchers analyzed data from the 2010-2020 statewide Florida Youth Tobacco Surveys of 461,706 middle-and high-schoolers and found that the annual blunt use rate increased from 8.5% in 2015 to approximately 13.6 % in 2020 for both boys and girls. The study found blunt use was associated with other unhealthy habits, including smoking cigarettes, e-cigarettes, hookah, cigars and smokeless tobacco. For example, both middle- and high-schoolers who vaped marijuana had more than 5-fold the odds of being a blunt user. According to the study, blunt users are more likely to be users of other tobacco products such as cigarette, e-cigarette, cigars and hookah. Smoking blunts could expose users to a wider range of harmful chemicals, as marijuana smoke contains many of the same harmful chemicals and carcinogens as tobacco, and recent research identified new chemical compounds in blunt smoke that were not previously found in either tobacco or marijuana smoke. Past users of blunts were more likely to report having lifetime asthma compared to non-users. The authors conclude that these results suggest that existing tobacco control programs should incorporate marijuana and blunts into existing smoking prevention programs, but that more national research is needed to understand the links between marijuana, tobacco and blunt consumption.

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The American Academy of Pediatrics is an organization of 67,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults.