{"id":20178,"date":"2025-11-01T18:47:35","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T17:47:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/?p=20178"},"modified":"2026-01-11T18:06:58","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T17:06:58","slug":"the-irrefutable-link-between-cannabis-and-cancer-in-young-americans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/2025\/11\/the-irrefutable-link-between-cannabis-and-cancer-in-young-americans\/","title":{"rendered":"The irrefutable link between cannabis and cancer in young Americans"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By <\/span>Kathy Gyngell – Editor of The Conservative Woman – October 2, 2025<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A STUDY published in June that I have just come across provides unsurprising but nonetheless devastating and irrefutable evidence linking increased cannabis use with rising rates of breast and testicular cancers in young Americans.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The study\u00a0covers the period\u00a0between 2000 and 2019.\u00a0The aim was\u00a0clear: to test the hypothesis that the increasing incidence of testis and breast cancer in adolescent and young adult (AYA) Americans correlates with their increasing cannabis use. Its\u00a0conclusions are stark: that North America has evidence which implicates cannabis as a potential etiologic factor contributing to the increasing incidence of breast carcinoma in young females and testis cancer in older adolescent and young adult males, and in most races and ethnicities. Temporal correlations suggest that a carcinogenic effect of cannabis is rapid, leading to cancer within a few years after cannabis exposure.\u00a0You can read this extremely detailed and careful study\u00a0here.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Its\u00a0overall study design involved comparing breast and testis cancer incidence trends in jurisdictions that had and had not legalised cannabis use.\u00a0In the\u00a0US,\u00a0both breast carcinoma in 20- to 34-year-old females and testis cancer in 15- to 39-year-old males had annual incidence rate increases that were highly correlated (Pearson\u2019s r = 0.95) with the increase in the number of cannabis-legalising jurisdictions during the period 2000\u20132019.\u00a0Both were significantly greater during the period 2000\u20132019 in the cannabis-legalising than non-legalising states.\u00a0<\/em>(My italics)<\/span><\/p>\n

During the period 2000\u20132019, registries in cannabis-legalising versus non-legalising states\u00a0documented\u00a0a 26\u00a0per cent\u00a0versus 17\u00a0per cent\u00a0increase in breast carcinoma and 24\u00a0per cent\u00a0versus 14 per cent\u00a0increase in testis cancer.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the same age groups,\u00a0the study (predictably) found\u00a0Canada had an even\u00a0greater increase in both breast and testis cancer incidence than the US.\u00a0A UNICEF study on the well-being of children\u00a0had already confirmed\u00a0that Canadian adolescents (aged 11 to 15) have the highest rate of cannabis use among the 29 advanced economies of the world. Of\u00a0particular\u00a0concern that legalising advocates\u00a0would do well to note is the\u00a0considerable percentage of the Canadian youth who\u00a0are daily or weekly users \u2013 approximately 22 per cent of boys and 10 per cent of girls.\u00a0And that\u00a0amongst the older\u00a016-19s the upward trend\u00a0in use which\u00a0increased to 43 per cent in 2023 compared with 36 per cent in 2018\u00a0follows the country\u2019s nationwide legalisation of cannabis for over-18s in 2018.<\/span><\/p>\n

This link between cannabis and these forms of cancer should come as no surprise.\u00a0\u00a0A\u00a0report from the American Cancer Society (ACS)\u00a0in February this year\u00a0identified non-seminoma testis cancer as the cancer type most closely linked to cannabis use.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

More shocking is that this relationship has been known about for years. In 2009,\u00a0scientists at the Fred Hutchinson\u00a0Cancer\u00a0Research Centre in Seattle investigated the possibility of a link\u00a0\u2018after learning that the testes were one of the few organs in the body to contain receptors for the main psychoactive substance in the drug, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)\u2018. \u00a0\u00a0The same scientists\u00a0noted that there had\u00a0also been a rise in testicular cancer cases that had\u00a0\u2018mirrored the rise in marijuana use since the 1950s\u2019.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The 2025 study is of course of a different\u00a0type and order of magnitude. It was certainly needed. Its\u00a0findings\u00a0warrant\u00a0the utmost\u00a0attention\u00a0of our national and local\u00a0public health\u00a0authorities which were so zealous to promote child\u00a0covid vaccination but have remained over the years so strangely silent about cannabis.<\/span><\/p>\n

This valuable study should also serve as a warning to cannabis legalisers including Sir Sadiq Khan that their endorsement of the drug and\u00a0indifference to the impact of legalisation on teen health\u00a0is not just\u00a0irresponsible\u00a0but near-criminal.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Postscript:\u00a0<\/strong>There are other disturbing elements regarding the underlying mechanisms noted\u00a0in the study\u2019s findings.\u00a0These, its authors state, \u2018may involve genotoxic effects, oxidative stress, and mitochondrial dysfunction caused by cannabis, leading to genomic instability\u2019.\u00a0For further\u00a0elucidation\u00a0of this a 2024 study published in\u00a0Addiction\u00a0Biology<\/em>\u00a0provides some key insights into\u00a0cannabis-cancer pathobiology and genotoxicity. You can read this report\u00a0here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:\u00a0 https:\/\/www.conservativewoman.co.uk\/the-irrefutable-link-between-cannabis-and-cancer-in-young-americans\/<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Kathy Gyngell – Editor of The Conservative Woman – October 2, 2025 A STUDY published in June that I have just come across provides unsurprising but nonetheless devastating and irrefutable evidence linking increased cannabis use with rising rates of breast and testicular cancers in young Americans. The study\u00a0covers the period\u00a0between 2000 and 2019.\u00a0The aim […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,68,64,60,120,128,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cannabis-marijuana","category-drug-use-various-effects","category-health","category-marijuana-and-medicine","category-mental-health","category-uk","category-youth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20178"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20179,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20178\/revisions\/20179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}