Smokers who mix tobacco with weed far less likely to quit either, study says

A man rolls a marijuana joint during a demonstration to call for the legalisation of marijuana in Paris, France. A new study has found that those who mix weed and tobacco are far less likely to quit either one. (KENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images)

By Kale Williams

 

Rolling a blunt or sprinkling tobacco into your weed may make it harder to quit either vice, according to an international study published Tuesday, and while that may seem obvious, the research showed that mixing the two dramatically increases dependence.

People will generally mix weed and tobacco for a variety of reasons. Some look to save money by tossing tobacco in with their marijuana to make it go farther, others prefer to roll blunts as they burn slowly and blunt wraps now come in flavored varieties. Researchers also found that mixing in tobacco can increase the efficiency of cannabis inhalation.

All of the above, however, greatly diminish the chances that users will give up either habit, according to the study's lead author Chandni Hindocha, a doctoral student at University College London.

"Cannabis dependence and tobacco dependence manifest in similar ways, so it is often difficult to separate these out in people who use both drugs," she said in a statement. "Cannabis is less addictive than tobacco, but we show here that mixing tobacco with cannabis lowers the motivation to quit using these drugs."

The risks of tobacco are well known — emphysema, cancer and heart attacks among them — and experts have pinned physical and psychological dependence, permanent reductions in cognitive performance and cardiovascular disease to long-term, heavy marijuana use.

The study was based on the responses of more than 33,000 people who took the 2014 Global Drug Survey, an anonymous survey put out by publications including Die Zeit, The Guardian, Libération, and the Huffington Post. Respondents hailed from 18 countries in North and South America, Europe and Australia.

The study is the first to analyze the popularity of different ways in which cannabis users around the world chose to get high — which scientists refer to as "routes of administration."

Spliffs and blunts, referred to as "tobacco routes," are far more popular in Europe than elsewhere, according to the study. Depending on which country you ask, somewhere between 77  and 90 percent of European weed smokers do so with some sort of tobacco mixed in. That number drops to just 51 percent in Australia and 20 percent in New Zealand.

But the Americas had the lowest figures for so-called "tobacco routes" with 16 percent of Canadian users preferring the method, just under 7 percent of Mexican smokers and roughly 4 percent of weed smokers in U.S. opting to mix their marijuana with tobacco.

Vaporizers, which the researchers classified as "strictly non-tobacco," saw high use in both the U.S. and Canada, 11 and 13 percent reported using the devices, respectively. But vapes see limited use around the rest of the world.

Researchers found that a person's preference of smoking method strongly corresponded to that person's motivation to seek out professional help to quit using both tobacco and marijuana.

"Our results highlight the importance of routes of administration when considering the health effects of cannabis and show that the co-administration of tobacco and cannabis is associated with decreased motivation to cease tobacco use, and to seek help for ceasing the use of tobacco and cannabis," Michael Lynskey, a professor at King's College London.

Weed smokers who didn't mix their pot with tobacco were 61 percent more likely to want help using less cannabis, the researchers found, and 80 percent more likely to want help quitting tobacco than those who smoke blunts or spliffs.

The results, according to Lynskey, are especially concerning as attitudes, and laws, around marijuana use continue to relax worldwide.

"Given a changing legislative environment surrounding access to cannabis in many jurisdictions, increased research focus should be given to reducing the use of routes of administration that involve the co-administration of tobacco," he said in a statement.