According to a study made by the researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center from Seattle, the young men who smoked marijuana as adolescents and the ones who used to smoke it at an average of twice a week are likely to develop testicular cancer.

The same study also showed that men aged between 20 and 25 who used to smoke pot may develop a certain form of testicular cancer, called nonseminoma. This violent and fast-developing subtype of testicular cancer is most likely to develop in younger men.

As Dr. Glen Justice, director of the cancer center at Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center in Fountain Valley, who was not involved with the study, stated, the problem isn’t just about developing testicular cancer, but about developing the worst form of it.

Further research shows that 40% of this type of cancer is nonseminoma and the rest of it is slower-growing seminomas. This second type of testicular cancer usually grows in men aged between 30 and 40. Another bad result is that this type of cancer has increased by 3% to 6% since 1950 in Europe, Australia, New Zeeland and the United States.

Numerous studies have tried to search for environmental causes which might have led to such an increase but the study published online today in the journal “Cancer” was the first one to link this increase to marijuana use. 371 men aged 18 to 44 who had been diagnosed with testicular cancer were interviewed by the researchers.

At the same time, 979 other men of the same age group were questioned too and the researchers discovered that the ones who had smoked pot were at 70% higher risk of developing testicular cancer.