Drs. Sterne and Ducastaing reported in 1960 in a French journal (Arch Mar Coeur) a case series of 29 cases of arteritis obliterans in young male Arabs in Morocco. They postulated that the use of cannabis indica which was widely used in Morocco might be related. This was the first published report of this association. The dried leaves and flowers of the cannabis plant were most often smoked (kif) in a special small pipe. Notably, however, the cannabis was most often mixed with tobacco and then smoked. Therefore it is unclear if there were any cases of arteritis obliterans that occurred in patients who only smoked pure cannabis not mixed with tobacco thus making it difficult to separate from tobacco-induced thromboangiitis obliterans (Buerger's disease). Interestingly, the first time "cannabis arteritis" was introduced as a term in the medical literature was in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine by Nahas in 1971. Sterling West, MD