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Marijuana use among pregnant women is rising, and so are concerns:
I'm relatively new to Oregon, but one of the ways I know I'm starting to settle in is my ability to recognize marijuana shops. Some are easy. But others, with names like The Agrestic and Mr. Nice Guy, are a little trickier to identify for someone who hasn't spent much time in a state that has legalized marijuana.
A growing number of states have legalized both medical and recreational marijuana. At the same time, women who are pregnant or breastfeeding are using the drug in increasing numbers. A 2017 JAMA study described both survey results and urine tests of nearly 280,000 pregnant women in Northern California, where medical marijuana was legalized in 1996. The study showed that in 2009, about 4 percent of the women tested used marijuana. In 2016, about 7 percent of women did. Those California numbers may be even higher now, since recreational marijuana became legal there this year.
Some of those numbers may be due in part to women using marijuana to treat their morning sickness, a more recent study by some of the same researchers suggests. Their report, published August 20 in JAMA Internal Medicine, found that pregnant women with severe nausea and vomiting were 3.8 times more likely to use marijuana than pregnant women without morning sickness.
So some pregnant women are definitely using the drug, and exposing their fetuses to it, too. Ingredients in marijuana are known to make their way to fetuses by crossing the placenta during pregnancy (and by entering breast milk after the baby is born). But what actually happens when those marijuana compounds arrive?
That's the question the American Academy of Pediatrics grapples with in a clinical report published in the August issue of Pediatrics. In an effort to provide guidance to caregivers and women, the AAP sums up the existing scientific literature on how marijuana affects mothers and babies.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday September 12 2018, @10:05AM (2 children)
Over the years, I've read a number of claims that smoking pot simply doesn't carry the same risks that smoking tobacco does. No nicotine, for starters, and the tars are entirely different. Add to that, no one just chain smokes pot all day every day.
I think that IF a pregnant woman is going to smoke anything at all, then pot is the healthier choice by far. Future studies may demolish that belief, of course. Maybe the THC does affect the embryo's brain in some way. If not the THC, then may some other component of pot smoke. It's a damned shame that no on was permitted to research this stuff for the past ~80 years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @04:11PM
In the beginning, no one just chain smoked tobacco all day every day either.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Thursday September 13 2018, @02:37AM
I've seen the same claim, but the only one approaching data pointed out that the difference is mostly quantity, and that in fact the tars from pot are considerably harder on the lungs (bigger stickier particles, harder for the lungs to get rid of) . So if you chainsmoked pot all day every day, you'd probably do yourself more lung damage.
Considering the study that found pot can trigger latent psychosis, I'd be rather more concerned about pot vs a developing brain, and begin to wonder if some of today's ...youthful problems... might have been influenced by THC in utero.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.