cannabisnews.com: Cannabis 'Stunts Baby Growth'










  Cannabis 'Stunts Baby Growth'

Posted by FoM on January 07, 2002 at 10:27:39 PT
Cannabis is not recommended during pregnancy 
Source: BBC News 

Women who smoke cannabis during pregnancy may be stunting the growth of their babies, research suggests. The effect of one smoking one cannabis joint a week throughout pregnancy appears to be equivalent to the effect produced by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. A team of researchers from the UK and New Zealand found no evidence that smoking cannabis when pregnant increases the risk of miscarriage. 
But they did find that regular users were more likely to give birth to small babies. However, the effect was small. On average, the babies of women who used cannabis at least once a week before and throughout pregnancy were 216g lighter than those of non-users. They were also significantly shorter, and had smaller heads. Once the researchers had taken into account other factors, such as cigarette smoking, they calculated that regular use of cannabis during pregnancy reduced average birth weight by an average of 90g.  Advice Writing in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaeocology, the researchers say: "These findings suggest that it would be prudent to advise pregnant women of the evidence that cannabis use may lead to reduced foetal growth. "More generally, pregnant women should be encouraged to avoid all forms of substance use behaviour during pregnancy." The reason why cannabis retards growth is still unclear. However, smoking the drug mixed with tobacco releases a cocktail of toxic chemicals that are thought likely to have a negative effect on the developing foetus. The researchers studied more than 12,000 women expecting single babies. Around one in 20 women who took part in the study admitted using cannabis before pregnancy, and a slightly smaller proportion said they used it while they were pregnant. However, the researchers say that it is likely that this figure underestimates the true figure. Source: BBC News (UK Web)Published: Monday, January 7, 2002Copyright: 2002 BBC Website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/ Contact: http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/talking_point/Related Articles & Web Site:Medical Marijuana Information Linkshttp://freedomtoexhale.com/medical.htmMarijuana May Hurt Couples' Conception Odds http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread7990.shtmlMarijuana Firmly Linked to Infertility http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread7980.shtml

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Comment #17 posted by LIVY on January 13, 2002 at 12:39:21 PT:
SUBJECT
Praise Jah for my freedom! Now that my mind is clear after living to 25 without it, DURING TRYING TIMES. IAM FREE FROM MENTAL SLAVERY
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Comment #16 posted by E_Johnson on January 08, 2002 at 22:02:04 PT
Tell BBC: Marijuana safer than tap water
Oh great now they're warning pregnant women to use bottled water, and refrain from taking too many showers and baths, because of the excess chlorination byproducts in tap water from using chlorine to kill microbes rather than keeping the lakes and rivers clean to begin with.http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20020108/sc/environment_water_dc_1.htmlCauses birth defects and miscarriages that are far worse than being 90g short of average.
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Comment #15 posted by BGreen on January 08, 2002 at 06:52:04 PT:
Is the BBC a US government propaganda tool?
They seem to have ulterior motives in their dissemination of prohibitionist propaganda.This reminds me of the Nazi regime, where Hitler, through his propaganda minister Goebbels, would issue statements to the press, and Hitler would read the lies and believe them as truth. All the while, Hitler had his "scientists" hard at work "creating" science to prove the lies.Now the US has the same thing. Bush lies, Ashcroft believes it, and vice versa, and their "scientists" are all too happy to jump on the bandwagon. To the world press, they believe the lies because it's been corroborated by more than one person in government, and "proven" in the scientific community.
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Comment #14 posted by JR Bob Dobbs on January 08, 2002 at 05:54:58 PT
So where's all the midget rastafarians??
  Don't forget, evidence cited in The Emperor Wears No Clothes points to the fact that the ancient Egyptians used to use cannabis as a pain reliever during childbirth... 
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Comment #13 posted by firedog on January 08, 2002 at 01:51:46 PT
90 g = 3.17 oz.
Need I say more?
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Comment #12 posted by legalizeit on January 07, 2002 at 20:44:30 PT
Cannabis as pregnancy medicine in Brazil?
I thought I heard once that a lot of pregnant women use cannabis in parts of Brazil as it quells "morning sickness", and I thought (it was some time ago) I also heard that babies born to these mothers are healthier!Anyone here ever read anything like this?
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Comment #11 posted by aocp on January 07, 2002 at 18:12:42 PT
Unspoken messages
The real message here is that we need to at least keep the status quo or else we'll have any of a whole host of societal ills, like small babies...I come back to legal and regulated booze and smokes. Everyone knows that mothers-to-be should not smoke tobacco nor drink booze, but do they face the legal ramifications of a mother who uses cannabis? Absolutely not. Until the sheep address this obvious double standard, they don't have a leg to stand on. Q.E.freakin'D.
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Comment #10 posted by E_Johnson on January 07, 2002 at 17:55:22 PT
BBC cannabis coverage "stunts mental growth"
A new study just published here today revealed that exposure to the BBC coverage of cannabis can stunt the mental growth of the average adult habitual BBC user.The toxins in the BBC news coverage of cannabis included but were not limited to the we-can-replace-science-cantwe virus, a pathogen long known to infect the news media at the tabloid level, and the bacillus we-don't-have-to-report-science that-doesn't-share-our-bias nerve toxin, which is a stealth chemical that can numb the brain cells of chronic BBC users into submission with repeated exposure while being almost asymptomatic until the final stages.Intelligence maintenance experts recommend that excess exposure to BBC cannabis coverage be accompanied by long searches on the Internet to see whether anything they say is true. This medication is believed to be capable of almost completely countering the effects of the stunting of mental growth due to the BBC cannabis coverage.
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Comment #9 posted by goneposthole on January 07, 2002 at 16:38:21 PT
HOGWASH
Complete HOGWASH
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Comment #8 posted by Sam Adams on January 07, 2002 at 12:20:36 PT
There's no control group
I am constantly amazed how causative relationships are assumed in medical research.Did they screen for other factors that affect fetal development? Like annual income? Dietary habits? Exercise? Nutrition? Stress? Working or not? I propose a new hypothesis: The women who ADMIT to smoking cannabis during pregnancy are at the low end of the socioeconomic spectrum, eating less food and getting less nutrition, getting less pre-natal care, and probably less healthy than upper-class women in just about every criteria possible.How can you POSSIBLY measure something like cannabis usage on a voluntary survey basis? We're talking about something that has a SEVERE social stigma in many circles - not to mention being illegal!By the way, maybe these researchers can tell us to the huge army of "crack babies" that was conceived back in the Reagan years of the 80's? What a surprise, they didn't turn out half-bad after all.......
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Comment #7 posted by FoM on January 07, 2002 at 12:18:46 PT
Dr. Russo
I get fatigued too. I'm so tired of so many things. I'm tired of the 'what about the children statement'. I am not advocating anything for minors but what about adults? What about real grown up people's rights? That's what gets to me. Why don't they say pregnant woman should move if they live in one of the heavily polluted cities? You only see them use children in an article because no one will say anything negative when they are mentioned. It's a dead end question and shouldn't be used. What about ADULTS? I want someone to write about that!
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Comment #6 posted by DdC on January 07, 2002 at 11:56:36 PT
Telling the Lies till They're Believed
It used to be wrong to lie and fib. But when its against cannabis, it seems to be ok with them. No one suffers any consequences for lying about the heathern devil weed. Any little bit of nonsense is ok for them to speak. Blame all of societies ills on benign plants to sell more pills. Tell the patient how much Uncle Sam cares keeping you behind bars for relieving nausea. It seems to me to find out about cannabis and pregnancy, one might try going someplace they actually, may even have been using it. Seems India is such a place and with a billion people, many toking hookah's and drinking bhang I'd say the baby making was doing fine. Costa Rica and Jamaica all with healthy babies running round. The only adverse effect of cannabis on pregnant women is the prohibition laws stripping them of their rights and the baby of its parents. The closer we get the harder they struggle to maintain the lie.
Peace, Love and Liberty
DdCPregnancy and Pot
http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/1375.html 
by "Dr Kate" 
Cannabis Culture (01 Sept, 1998) backissues -> 
http://www.cannabisculture.com/backissues/
CC14 -> 
http://www.cannabisculture.com/backissues/issue.cgi?num=14Shakti: Cannabis & Pregnancy 
http://www.pot-tv.net/archive/shows/pottvshowse-720.htmlPrenatal Cannabis Exposure and Neonatal Outcomes in Jamaica: An Ethnographic Study
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/medical/can-babies.htm Organic Cannabis/Tobacco vs Chemical Cigarettes
http://pub3.ezboard.com/fendingcannabisprohibitionwhyitstimetolegalize.showMessage?topicID=310.topicCosta Rican Studies
http://www.cannabinoid.com/wwwboard/politics/binaries/27/27623.gif
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Comment #5 posted by Ethan Russo MD on January 07, 2002 at 11:26:25 PT:

Fatigue
I admit to tremendous fatigue trying to counter a constant stream of marijuana myths.This same issue has been addressed repeatedly in the literature. An excerpt from an upcoming paper I am writing:The population of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada has been extensively studied over the last two decades with respect to cannabis effects in pregnancy. In a small study of cannabis using mothers vs. abstainers (O'Connell and Fried 1984), ocular hypertelorism and “severe epicanthus” were only noted in children born to users.
	
In 1987, the Ottawa group compared effects of cannabis, tobacco, alcohol and caffeine during gestation (Fried et al. 1987). Whereas tobacco negatively affected neonatal birth weight and head circumference, and alcohol was associated with lower birth weight and length, no effects on any growth parameters were ascribable to maternal cannabis usage.In a subsequent study (Witter and Niebyl 1990), examination of 8350 birth records revealed that 417 mothers (5%) claimed cannabis-only usage in pregnancy, but no association was noted with prematurity or congenital anomalies. The authors suggested that previously ascribed links to cannabis were likely confounded by concomitant alcohol and tobacco abuse.A group in Boston noted a decrease in birth weight of 79 g in infants born to 331 of 1226 surveyed mothers with positive using drug screen for cannabis (p=0.04)(Parker and Zuckerman 1999), but no changes in gestation, head circumference of congenital abnormalities were noted.The largest study of the issue to date evaluated 12,424 pregnancies (Linn et al. 1983). Although low birth weight, shortened gestation and malformations seemed to be associated with maternal cannabis usage, when logistic regression analysis was employed to control for other demographic and exposure factors, this association fell out of statistical significance. Dreher has extensively examined prenatal cannabis usage in Jamaica (Dreher 1997; Dreher, Nugent, and Hudgins 1994), wherein the population observations are not compounded by concomitant alcohol, tobacco, or polydrug abuse. This study is unique in that regard, no less due to the heavy intake of cannabis (“ganja”), often daily, in this cohort of Rastafarian women. No differences were seen between groups of cannabis-using and non-cannabis-using mothers in the weight, length, gestational age or Apgar scores of their infants (Dreher, Nugent, and Hudgins 1994). Deleterious effects on progeny of cannabis smokers were not apparent; in fact, developmental precocity was observed in some measures in infants born to women who smoked ganja daily. The author noted (Dreher 1997)(p. 168):The findings from Jamaica, however, suggest that prenatal cannabis exposure is considerably more complex than we might first have thought. Loss of appetite, nausea and fatigue compound the “bad feeling” that women in this study commonly reported. For many women, ganja was seen as an option that provided a solution to these problems, i.e., to increase their appetites, control and prevent the nausea of pregnancy, assist them to sleep, and give them the energy they needed to work. ---The women with several pregnancies, in particular, reported that the feelings of depression and desperation attending motherhood in their impoverished communities were alleviated by both social and private smoking. In this respect, the role of cannabis in providing both physical comfort and a more optimistic outlook may need to be reconceptualized, not as a recreational vehicle of escapism, but as a serious attempt to deal with difficult physical, emotional, and financial circumstances.There you have it. There is an expression, "No drug is the best drug in pregnancy." I do not recommend that pregnant mothers smoke cannabis. However, the idea that cannabis only usage represents a grave risk in pregnancy is unfounded.
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Comment #4 posted by Jose Melendez on January 07, 2002 at 11:21:06 PT:

myth exposed
from:
http://www.norml.org/canorml/myths/myth2.shtml
Myth: Marijuana Causes Birth Defects
     While experts generally recommend against any drug use during
pregnancy, marijuana has little evidence implicating it in fetal harm,
unlike alcohol, cocaine or tobacco.  Epidemiological studies have found no
evident link between prenatal use of marijuana and birth defects in
humans. A recent study by Dr. Susan Astley at the University of
Washington refuted an earlier work suggesting that cannabis might cause
fetal alcohol syndrome.
Dr. Susan Astley, "Analysis of Facial Shape in Children 
  Gestationally Exposed to Marijuana, Alcohol, and/or Cocaine," 
  Pediatrics 89#1: 67-77 (June 1992).
     Although some research has found that prenatal cannabis use is
associated with slightly reduced average birth weight and length, these
studies have been open to methodological criticism. More recently, a
well-controlled study found that cannabis use had a positive impact on
birthweight during the third trimester of pregnancy with no adverse
behavioral consequences.Nancy Day et al., "Prenatal Marijuana Use and Neonatal Outcome,"
  Neurotoxicology and Teratology 13: 329-34 (1992).
 The same study found a slight reduction in birth
length with pot use in the first two months of pregnancy. Another study of
Jamaican women who had smoked pot throughout pregnancy found that their
babies registered higher on developmental scores at the age of 30 days,
while experiencing no significant effects on birthweight or length.Janice Hayes, Melanie Dreher and J. Kevin Nugent, 
  "Newborn Outcomes With Maternal Marihuana Use in Jamaican Women," 
  Pediatric Nursing 14 #2: 107-10 (Mar-Apr. 1988).
     While cannabis use is not recommended in pregnancy, it may be of
medical value to some women in treating morning sickness or easing
childbirth.
marijuana myths
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Comment #3 posted by FoM on January 07, 2002 at 10:50:17 PT

My Opinion
When a woman is pregnant she should use good common sense because she is nurturing a new life and whatever she consumes can cause different effects in the unborn child. I didn't even take an aspirin when I was pregnant but continued to smoke cigarettes because they didn't say you shouldn't back in the 60s but now I would have stopped cigarettes too. My feelings are it is only 9 months of not being able to do everything you might want but what is nine months to sacrifice?PS: This article sounds like a suggestion but if a person in the states violates the recommendation in this article they can have their child taken from them and that is worse then a little smoke in my opinion.
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Comment #2 posted by greenfox on January 07, 2002 at 10:47:14 PT

Don't have exact quote, but...
In the beginning of Mel Frank's wonderful book, "The Marijuana Grower's Guide", there is a quote near the beginning. I know this isn't the exact quote, but it's something like:"Never before in all of history have so much money and so much time been spent trying to prove the ills of a plant as benign as cannabis".-gf
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Comment #1 posted by Mari on January 07, 2002 at 10:39:05 PT

Smoking ??
 I am unclear whether this article is saying that cannabis smoking ALONE caused low birth weight or if smoking cannabis WITH tobacco is the problem. 
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