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A major scientific review has concluded that e-cigarettes are likely to cause cancer. The finding could reshape how governments, health bodies and the public think about vaping. Published in the journal Carcinogenesis on 31 March 2026, the study offers one of the most comprehensive assessments of the e-cigarette cancer risk to date. It raises serious questions about a product long marketed as a safer alternative to smoking.
What the Review Found About E-Cigarette Cancer Risk
Professor Bernard Stewart, a cancer researcher at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, led the review. His team examined a wide body of evidence including clinical data, animal studies and laboratory experiments. The central finding was stark: nicotine-based vapes are “likely to be carcinogenic to humans.”
“Considering all the findings, from clinical monitoring, animal studies and mechanistic data, e-cigarettes are likely to cause lung cancer and oral cancer,” Professor Stewart said during a media briefing.
Many previous studies evaluated vaping only by comparing it with cigarette smoking. This review assessed the e-cigarette cancer risk on its own terms. That distinction matters. For years, the harm reduction argument has driven public health policy on vaping. This research challenges that framing directly.
The Science Linking Vaping and Cancer
E-cigarettes have only been in widespread use for around 20 years. Long-term population studies simply do not exist yet. Rather than waiting decades for that data, researchers examined biomarkers, the early biological changes that signal cancer development.
Studies in the review show that people who vape absorb nicotine-related compounds, heavy metals and other chemicals. These substances damage DNA and trigger inflammation, both of which drive cancer.
Animal studies add further weight to the concern. In one experiment, mice exposed to e-cigarette aerosols developed lung tumours at significantly higher rates than control groups. They also showed bladder changes linked to cancer.
“There is no doubt that the cells and tissues of the oral cavity and the lungs are altered by inhalation from e-cigarettes,” Professor Stewart said.
Dual Use Is Compounding the Vaping and Cancer Threat
Researchers call it “dual use.” It describes the pattern where people use both e-cigarettes and traditional cigarettes rather than fully switching. More than half of users studied could not quit either habit.
Co-author Professor Freddy Sitas, an epidemiologist at UNSW, highlighted data from the United States. People who both vape and smoke face a fourfold increased risk of developing lung cancer compared with those who do neither.
The global vaping industry is worth an estimated $30 billion to $46 billion. Major tobacco companies including Altria Group, British American Tobacco and Imperial Brands have invested heavily in e-cigarettes. For those companies, these findings carry significant commercial and regulatory weight.
A Warning From History
The review draws an uncomfortable parallel with the history of tobacco research. Scientists took decades to prove conclusively that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer. Early warning signs existed long before the field reached consensus. The authors argue researchers should not repeat this mistake with vaping and cancer.
“We should not wait another 80 years to decide what to do,” Professor Sitas said.
The concern grows sharper given how quickly vaping has spread among young people. A generation is now growing up with the habit. The long-term consequences remain unknown.
What E-Cigarette Cancer Risk Means for Public Health
Countries including New Zealand and the United Kingdom have actively encouraged smokers to switch to vaping. The new analysis questions whether those approaches adequately account for the long-term vaping and cancer relationship.
Health experts involved in the study were clear on one point. Their findings should not push smokers back to cigarettes, which remain far more harmful.
“We have always assumed that vapes are safer than cigarettes, but what we are showing is that they might not be safe after all,” Professor Sitas said.
The assessment remains qualitative. Researchers have not yet produced a numerical estimate of cancer risk. Even so, reviews over the past decade have moved steadily from uncertainty toward serious concern about carcinogenic effects.
The Bottom Line
The e-cigarette cancer risk is real, even if scientists cannot yet put a precise number on it. The idea that vaping carries no meaningful health consequences has always rested more on a lack of evidence than on proof of safety.
This review brings the long-term consequences of vaping into sharper focus. Governments, regulators and individuals now face a clear question. Act on the evidence now, or wait for certainty that may arrive too late.
(Source: WRD News)
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A veterinary sedative used to tranquillise elephants is now showing up in the illegal drug supply across New York State. Authorities warn the medetomidine overdose crisis is more dangerous than anything they have seen in recent years. Dealers quietly mix this powerful animal sedative into opioid supplies without users’ knowledge, triggering a surge in deaths and life-threatening withdrawal episodes.
What Is Medetomidine and Why Is It Fuelling Overdose Deaths?
Most people have never heard of medetomidine. Veterinarians use it to sedate large animals, including elephants. Over the past two years, it has entered the illicit drug market at a pace that alarms toxicologists, paramedics, and prosecutors alike.
Assistant District Attorney Matthew Gamberg is deputy chief of the Narcotics-Investigations Bureau in Staten Island. He told the Staten Island Fentanyl and Overdose Task Force in March 2025 that medetomidine is 200 to 300 times more potent than xylazine. Xylazine is another veterinary drug previously linked to overdose deaths and disability.
“Xylazine is still prevalent in the drug supply, but its presence is definitely on a downward trend,” Gamberg said. “It is being replaced with medetomidine, which, for all intents and purposes, is worse.”
Dealers add the drug to fentanyl to extend its effects. Fentanyl wears off in roughly half the time heroin does. So dealers blend in medetomidine and xylazine to prolong the high. That combination carries lethal consequences for unsuspecting users.
How Fast Is the Medetomidine Overdose Crisis Spreading?
The numbers tell a troubling story. New York State Drug Checking Programmes first spotted medetomidine in a sample in May 2024. Just four months later, it turned up in over 23% of opioid samples tested.
By October 2025, that figure reached 37% of all opioid samples. During the same period, xylazine appeared in 40% of opioid samples. Two potent veterinary sedatives now circulate simultaneously in the street supply.
The New York State Department of Health issued a public health alert in December, citing life-threatening side effects and the rapid spread of medetomidine across the state’s drug market.
It Makes Naloxone Less Effective
One of the most frightening parts of the medetomidine overdose crisis is how it undermines naloxone, the most widely used overdose reversal tool available (commonly known as Narcan).
Medetomidine is not an opioid. Naloxone does not fully reverse its effects. Emergency responders may administer naloxone and revive a patient from opioid-related respiratory depression. Yet the person can remain deeply sedated because the medetomidine component stays active.
This gap complicates emergency care significantly. Communities relying on naloxone as a first-line response now work with an incomplete tool. In cases involving veterinary drug overdose deaths linked to medetomidine, that gap can cost lives.
Withdrawal from Medetomidine Can Kill
The dangers do not end with the overdose itself. The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene warns that medetomidine withdrawal can require intensive medical care and hospitalisation.
Emergency room visits for medetomidine withdrawal rose sharply last year. Opioid withdrawal is deeply unpleasant but rarely fatal for otherwise healthy adults. Medetomidine withdrawal is different. It disrupts the cardiovascular system and can cause blood pressure to drop, heart rate to slow, and breathing to suppress.
Health officials urge anyone withdrawing from drugs that may contain medetomidine to seek immediate medical attention. Trying to manage those symptoms at home puts lives at serious risk.
Fake Anti-Anxiety Pills Add to the Medetomidine Overdose Crisis
Medetomidine is not the only new danger circulating in the illicit market. In March 2026, the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) issued a nationwide alert about bromazolam. This synthetic benzodiazepine now appears in counterfeit prescription pills designed to look like anti-anxiety medications such as alprazolam (Xanax).
The DEA elevated bromazolam to the top tier of the controlled substances schedule on an emergency basis through March 2028. Trafficking has increased and the drug carries no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.
Manufacturers frequently mix bromazolam with fentanyl. Counterfeit pills are notoriously difficult to tell apart from legitimate ones by sight alone. The DEA has repeatedly warned that fake prescription pills can contain fatal doses of fentanyl.
Bromazolam causes slurred speech, loss of bodily coordination, altered mental state, and respiratory depression.
Cocaine Rises as Fentanyl Trends Down Slightly
There is a partial bright spot in the data. Fentanyl remains the leading driver of overdose deaths, but its potency and prevalence show some decline on Staten Island. Gamberg says law enforcement officers in the borough now recover less fentanyl and more cocaine.
Cocaine’s rise carries its own risks. It rarely kills on its own, but it frequently appears alongside fentanyl in fatal overdose toxicology reports. The United Nations World Drug Report 2025 found that global cocaine production reached an all-time high, with significant increases in seizures, users, and cocaine-related deaths across many countries.
Nearly every drug law enforcement recovers on the island, except cocaine, tests positive for multiple substances. Heroin almost always combines with fentanyl, medetomidine, xylazine, and lidocaine. A single sample can contain over 20 different substances. That complexity makes overdose reversal far harder.
Overdose Deaths Are Falling, but the Veterinary Drug Overdose Deaths Toll Remains Too High
Staten Island has made real progress. Overdose deaths in the borough fell by nearly 50% in 2024. Preliminary figures suggest that downward trend continued through 2025 and into 2026.
But District Attorney Michael E. McMahon was clear: the numbers remain unacceptably high. He hosted the March task force meeting and cautioned that the spread of medetomidine, bromazolam, and increasingly complex drug combinations demands that response strategies keep evolving.
Communities, healthcare providers, and policymakers must stay current on the medetomidine overdose crisis. Early detection, stronger withdrawal treatment protocols, and broader public awareness are not optional. For anyone struggling with substance use, or for those who love someone who is, knowing what is in the supply chain today can be a matter of life and death.
(Source: WRD News)
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The landscape of substance use is shifting beneath our feet. Public conversation remains fixed on the tragedy of the opioid epidemic. However, a quieter surge is occurring in the background. Stimulants like cocaine and methamphetamine have returned to the illicit market. This is not a repeat of the 1980s. The substances found on the streets today are more potent. They are also more unpredictable and lethal. Understanding these stimulant abuse risks is the first step toward effective prevention.
The Changing Face of Chemical Dependency
For years the narrative surrounding drug use was segmented. People were often categorised as either heroin users or cocaine users. This distinction has largely vanished in recent years. The current crisis is defined by a crossover of substances. This creates a volatile environment for the human body. Between 2016 and 2023 cocaine related fatalities in the US nearly tripled. Deaths rose from approximately 10,000 to nearly 30,000 annually. This sharp increase highlights the severe dangers of drug misuse. The purity of a substance is now a relic of the past. Today the risk includes an unknown chemical cocktail.
The Biological Strain and Stimulant Abuse Risks
Stimulants work by forcing the central nervous system into hyper arousal. The immediate effect might be a surge of energy. However the internal cost to the body is immense. These substances place an extraordinary burden on the heart. When a person consumes high potency stimulants their blood pressure skyrockets. This forces the heart muscle to work at an unsustainable pace. Over time this leads to permanent scarring of the cardiac tissue. It also creates a heightened risk of stroke or heart attack. These events occur even in young individuals with no prior health issues. The dangers of drug misuse extend far beyond the initial high.
Why Modern Cocaine Increases the Dangers of Drug Misuse
One terrifying aspect of the stimulant resurgence is synthetic additives. Many individuals believe they are purchasing traditional cocaine. Forensic testing increasingly reveals the presence of synthetic opioids like fentanyl. This unintentional co-use is a primary driver of rising death rates. Stimulants mask the sedative effects of opioids at first. A person may not realise they have ingested a lethal dose. Their respiratory system then begins to fail suddenly. There is often no second chance in these scenarios. The unpredictability of the supply chain makes every instance a gamble. Every use is a risk to a person’s life.
The Lack of a Medical Safety Net
A common misconception exists about modern medicine and drug emergencies. People believe doctors have a quick reversal agent for every crisis. This is dangerously false regarding stimulants. The world is now familiar with Naloxone for opioid overdoses. No such equivalent exists for cocaine or methamphetamine. Medical professionals cannot simply administer a spray to stop the process. If a person suffers a cardiac event they must manage symptoms manually. They can only try to cool the body or steady the heart. This lack of a direct intervention makes prevention the only reliable way to survive.
Recognising the Signs of Stimulant Abuse Risks
Education is a vital tool in preventing the worst outcomes. It is crucial to recognise when a person enters a medical crisis. Common indicators include a rapid and irregular heartbeat. An extreme rise in body temperature is another major warning sign. Erratic or aggressive behaviour may also occur suddenly. Some individuals experience hallucinations or lose touch with reality. These symptoms are not just part of the experience. They are clear warnings that the body is reaching a breaking point. Physical signs like dilated pupils and heavy sweating precede cardiovascular collapse. Recognising these stimulant abuse risks early can save a life.
Prioritising Mental and Physical Wellness
The goal of a healthy society is to foster drug free environments. People should not feel the need to turn to chemical escapism. The path to long term health is built on connection and resilience. A clear understanding of the dangers of drug misuse is also essential. As the potency of illicit substances rises the margin for error disappears. Choosing a life free from these substances protects the brain. It also ensures the longevity of the heart. By focusing on biological realities we empower individuals. We help them make choices that support a vibrant and healthy future. (Source: WRD News)
Also see Global: The 'Drug of Choice' for the Cashed Up! It's Past Time to 'D' Brand Cocaine?
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Imagine you have tried everything. You have been through the antidepressants, the talking therapies, the adjustments to lifestyle and sleep and diet that well-meaning clinicians suggest. Nothing has worked. You are still depressed, still suffering, and still looking for something that will help. Then you read the headlines. Psychedelics, they say, are transforming the treatment of mental illness. Magic mushrooms are producing breakthroughs. Researchers are excited. Regulators are responding. But before relief feels finally within reach, one question demands an honest answer: is psychedelic therapy safe?
This is the story being told to some of the most vulnerable people in the country. So is psychedelic therapy safe? And is it effective? Those questions deserve honest answers.
A New Way to Approve a Drug
There has always been a formal process for deciding whether a medicine is safe and effective enough to give to patients. Regulators designed it to be slow and demanding. Treatments have to prove themselves through rigorous clinical trials before they reach the public. That process exists because the history of medicine is also a history of treatments that seemed promising and turned out to be harmful.
Something different is happening with psychedelics. Rather than evidence, a combination of advocacy, media attention, and commercial investment is driving their legitimacy, and building its own kind of momentum. Call it the “vote for medicine” model: if enough people believe in a treatment strongly enough and push hard enough for access, the evidential bar quietly drops to accommodate them.
In 2023, Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration rescheduled psilocybin and MDMA, making them more accessible as therapeutic medicines. The decision came after years of optimistic media coverage and intense lobbying from researchers, patient groups, and a rapidly growing psychedelic industry. Researcher Jack Wilson, a research fellow at the University of Sydney, noted the parallel with medicinal cannabis: “Medicinal cannabis originally had many hoops to jump through, like psychedelic-assisted therapies do in Australia now. But in 2021, things streamlined and it became much easier to access.” His concern is that psychedelics are heading down the same road, with access expanding before the evidence is ready to support it.
What Three New Studies Found
This week, three studies landed that should prompt serious reflection from everyone involved in that push.
Two studies published in JAMA Psychiatry examined the effectiveness of psychedelics against traditional antidepressants. The first reviewed clinical trials across LSD, psilocybin, peyote, and ayahuasca, and found that none of these performed better than conventional antidepressants for treating depression. The second, a clinical trial of psilocybin specifically, returned inconclusive results. In that trial, 86 per cent of participants could accurately identify whether they had received the drug or a placebo. When patients know they have taken a drug they have been told is revolutionary, the results cannot be cleanly separated from the power of expectation.
A third study, published in The Lancet, reviewed 54 clinical trials on cannabis and cannabinoids and found no evidence they effectively treat depression, anxiety, or PTSD. Doctors in Australia prescribe cannabis most commonly for exactly those three conditions. More striking still: across all 54 trials, not one randomised controlled study had looked specifically at cannabis for depression. “Those three are quite important because they’re three of the leading mental health conditions for which they’re prescribed,” Wilson said. “In fact, there was actually not a single randomised controlled trial that examined cannabis use for the treatment of depression, which is really concerning.
Randomised controlled trials are not a bureaucratic preference. They are the most reliable tool medicine has for distinguishing treatments that actually work from treatments that people believe work. Their absence is a serious problem, not a detail.
The Research Is Weaker Than the Headlines Suggest
The problem runs deeper than three studies. Researchers Michael van Elk and Eiko Fried at Leiden University have documented ten methodological problems that recur across psychedelic research. These are not obscure statistical concerns. They are fundamental failures that undermine the reliability of findings across the field.
Many studies have no control group at all. Without a comparison group, a result is almost meaningless. Van Elk and Fried highlight a 27-person psilocybin study in which 60 per cent of participants were no longer depressed after a year. That sounds encouraging until you learn that other research shows more than half of people with depression would recover without treatment within the same period. The study could not distinguish the drug’s effect from natural recovery.
Financial conflicts of interest pervade the field. Pharmaceutical companies fund most psychedelic research, and researchers with those ties are five times more likely to report a positive drug effect than those without them. Researchers also routinely switch outcomes: when a drug fails on its pre-registered measure, they quietly swap in a new one and present it as though it were always the point. One ketamine study found that only two of fourteen patients showed lower suicidal ideation at three months. The study’s title still called it “sustained” improvement.
Sam Moreton, a lecturer in psychology at the University of Wollongong, said what the data supports: “The hype around psychedelic therapy has consistently run ahead of what the evidence actually supports. There are good theoretical reasons to think psychedelic-assisted therapy could help with depression and other mental health conditions, and I think it’s absolutely worth researching properly. But the field has serious methodological problems that have been well documented.”
The honest summary is that we do not yet know whether these treatments work, for whom, under what conditions, or at what risk. Asking whether psychedelic therapy is safe is not a fringe concern. It is the most basic question medicine requires us to answer before widespread use. Science cannot yet provide that answer.
What Happens Outside the Trial
There is a further gap that rarely makes the headlines. When people ask whether psychedelic therapy is safe, clinical trials always qualify their answer: safe under these conditions, with these patients, in this setting. Trials run as controlled environments. Researchers screen participants carefully, excluding anyone with histories of psychosis, suicidality, or multiple diagnoses. Staff measure every dose. Trained therapists stay present throughout. When things go wrong, help stands ready.
This is not how most people will encounter these drugs if access continues to expand.
A Canadian study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal examined what happens to people who present in emergency rooms after severe psychedelic reactions. Researchers found these individuals were 2.6 times more likely to die within five years. Suicide was the most common cause of early death in this group, followed by unintentional drug poisoning. Dr Daniel Myran, the study’s lead author, was direct about the gap between clinical settings and real-world use: “You’re in a controlled environment with help standing by [in trials]. That is very different from the experience for people outside of these trials.”
Dr Charles Raison, a psychiatry professor and expert in psychedelic studies at the University of Wisconsin, noted that adverse outcomes sometimes persisted well beyond the initial episode: “Maybe one in 20 people report having ongoing difficulties they ascribe to the psychedelic experience. A year later, they say, ‘I had an experience so distressing it messed up my ability to function, alienated me from my family, or gave me PTSD.'”
The patients most likely to be screened out of clinical trials are also, not coincidentally, many of the patients most desperate for help. The people who read optimistic headlines are not always the people who would qualify for a supervised trial.
The Harm in False Hope
There is a version of this argument that sounds uncompassionate, so let us be clear about what this argument actually says. No one is arguing that psychedelics can never help anyone. Some researchers, including Professor Susan Rossell of Swinburne University of Technology, believe that properly conducted trials, with rigorous psychotherapeutic support alongside drug treatment, may eventually produce stronger evidence in their favour. That view is worth taking seriously. But “is psychedelic therapy safe” is not a question that goodwill and optimism can answer. Only evidence can.
But Professor Rossell also said this: “We’ve had a couple of people come through our programs and actually relapsed. So I guess we could say that we’ve made them worse, which is awful.”
This is a researcher who believes in the work, running trials with proper supervision, still producing outcomes that harmed people. The question of what happens to patients outside that level of care, chasing a treatment promoted with confidence the evidence does not yet support, is not a small one.
When desperate people are given inflated hope, they do not just feel disappointed when the treatment fails. Worse, they may delay pursuing treatments with stronger evidence. Unregulated access without proper support becomes more likely. And some emerge worse than they went in, with fewer resources and less trust in the health system that was supposed to help them.
Lowering evidential standards in the name of compassion is not compassionate. It is a way of making the people pushing for access feel that they are doing something, while the patients themselves carry the risk.
The Standard Worth Keeping
Caution here is not a stance against hope or research. It is a demand for honesty. Is psychedelic therapy safe? Right now, nobody can reliably answer that question. The science remains immature, methodologically compromised, and unable to support the claims advocates make on its behalf. The patients most likely to seek these treatments rank among the most vulnerable people in the health system. They deserve straight answers about what we know, what we don’t, and what dangers they face.
Good medicine has always had to hold the line between what patients want to hear and what the evidence actually shows. That line is not a bureaucratic inconvenience. It is the thing that separates medicine from false hope.
The vote for medicine model feels generous. In practice, it transfers risk onto the people least equipped to bear it. That is not a reform. It is a failure.
(Source: WRD News)
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Cannabis, cocaine and amphetamines all raise the risk of stroke significantly. That is the central finding of the largest study ever conducted on recreational drugs and stroke risk, drawing on data from more than 100 million people. Researchers at the University of Cambridge published their findings in the International Journal of Stroke in March 2026. The study concludes that these substances do not merely correlate with stroke. They appear to cause it.
The Statistics on Drug Use and Stroke Risk
The study found cocaine use raises stroke risk by 96%. Amphetamines raise it by 122%. Cannabis, often seen as the softer option, still increases the risk by 37%. Researchers found no significant link between opioid use and stroke.
Among adults under 55, the numbers become even more striking. Amphetamine use raises stroke risk by 174% in this age group. That is nearly three times the average person’s risk. Cocaine use in younger adults still carries a 97% elevated risk. Cannabis raises it by 14% in the same group.
Stroke is the third leading cause of death and disability combined worldwide. Most people associate it with older age, high blood pressure or poor diet. This research now adds drug use and stroke to that list of major, modifiable risk factors.
In England and Wales, around 2.9 million adults aged 16 to 59 reported using a recreational drug in 2024. That represents 8.8% of that age group. In the United States, more than half of all people over the age of 12 report having used cocaine, cannabis or opiates at least once.
Recreational Drugs and Stroke Risk: Moving Beyond Correlation
Earlier studies could show a connection between drug use and stroke. But they could not confirm the drugs were the actual cause. Other lifestyle factors among users clouded the picture.
The Cambridge team used a method called Mendelian randomisation to dig deeper. This technique looks at naturally occurring genetic variants linked to drug use and to stroke. It tests whether a true causal relationship exists between the two. The results pointed clearly toward cause, not just correlation.
Cocaine use disorders showed a strong connection to brain haemorrhage and cardioembolic stroke. In cardioembolic stroke, a blood clot forms in the heart and travels to the brain, cutting off blood flow. Cannabis use disorders linked most strongly to large artery stroke.
Dr Megan Ritson from the Stroke Research Group at the University of Cambridge said the research “provides compelling evidence that drugs like cocaine, amphetamines, and cannabis are causal risk factors for stroke.”
Dr Eric Harshfield, an Alzheimer’s Society Research Fellow at the Department of Clinical Neurosciences, was equally direct. He stated that the analysis shows it is the drugs themselves driving the elevated risk, not simply the broader lifestyle of those who use them.
How Recreational Drugs Damage the Brain
The body reacts to these substances in several ways that are known to trigger stroke. Blood pressure spikes sharply and suddenly. Blood vessels go into spasm and constrict. Heart rhythm becomes disrupted. Cannabis use promotes increased blood clotting. Amphetamines can cause inflammation of blood vessel walls.
Each of these reactions is a recognised pathway to stroke. They can lead to ischaemic strokes, which blood clots cause, and to haemorrhagic strokes, which involve bleeding in the brain. The danger does not require years of heavy use. These effects can strike acutely, even in otherwise healthy adults.
What the Research Means for Public Health
Drug use and stroke share a relationship that public health policy can no longer ignore. Dr Harshfield emphasised that reducing substance use would carry a meaningful benefit beyond addiction itself: a measurable reduction in stroke cases.
The research received funding from the British Heart Foundation, with additional support from the National Institute for Health and Care Research Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre.
The evidence now speaks plainly. For more than 100 million reasons, recreational drugs and stroke risk belong in the same sentence.
Source: WRD-News