Who’s using medical marijuana?

Combing through a large national survey from 2016-2017, researchers have gleaned that people with medical conditions — notably asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, arthritis, cancer, and depression — are more likely to say they use marijuana than people without such illnesses. Those numbers skew young: A quarter of people age 18 to 34 reported current marijuana use but that shrank to 2.4% for people 65 and older. "Clinicians should screen for marijuana use among patients, understand why and how patients are using marijuana, and work with patients to optimize outcomes and reduce marijuana-associated risks," the authors urge. They also caution that because the study was observational, they can’t establish cause and effect between medical conditions and marijuana use.