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A Kingston cardiologist and former president of the Canadian Medical Association will be sounding the alarm on Friday at a major meeting of stroke experts over the link between marijuana and heart attacks and stroke.

“I’m not here to demonize cannabis. We don’t need to go back to reefer madness. But we can’t say it does not harm,” said Dr. Chris Simpson, who was president of the CMA in 2014 and 2015 and made the public health implications and possible medicinal uses of marijuana one of the focal points of his term.

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“If we have several million people smoking marijuana every day, we want to know what the effects are,” said Simpson, who will be addressing researchers, health professionals and policy-makers at the Canadian Stroke Congress.

There is a widespread belief that marijuana is actually healthy, yet someone who has smoked a joint is about as likely to have heart attack within an hour as someone who has shovelled snow, said Simpson.