Cannabis sends pregnant women to the hospital: study – Cannabis | weed | marijuana

Cannabis sends twice as many pregnant “people” to the hospital, according to a new study on cannabis use during pregnancy published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

(And yes, the study calls pregnant women “humans” to be “inclusive,” offending women and dismissing biological facts.)

The researchers looked at over 950,000 pregnancies between January 2015 and July 2021. They found that the rate of emergency room and hospital visits related to cannabis use doubled during pregnancy.

Ergo: Legalization has failed Canada’s pregnant “people”.

Of course, doubling the rate sounds bad until you ask what the baseline is. Before legalization, there were 11 women in hospitals for every 100,000 pregnancies seeking treatment for overuse of cannabis.

After legalization? There are 20 women for every 100,000. And according to the study, these women were “very high” and therefore sought help.

In other words: the refrigerated container madness hysteria instigated by this study is unjustified.

Cannabis sends pregnant women to the hospital: study

According to the research, pregnant “people” suffer from “cannabis use disorder” and thus cannot control or stop their use even when pregnant. They came to this conclusion because 22 percent experienced withdrawal symptoms.

But how can you casually relate physical withdrawal from a substance to physiological dependence? These are two different processes. One is the physical state of the brain and body in eliminating a drug; the other is the subjective experience of this phenomenon.

The study suggests that “cannabis use during pregnancy is associated with adverse perinatal and neonatal outcomes, including stillbirth, preterm birth, and neonatal morbidity and mortality.”

They also cite “evidence” of a link between cannabis use during pregnancy and autism. However, the study they refer to emphasizes “cautious interpretation” due to confounding factors.

Likewise, the other studies they reference are based on self-reported cannabis use. One of them doesn’t even support the conclusions he claims.

Consider one of the articles they cite: “Maternal Marijuana Use, Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes, and Neonatal Morbidity.”

It states, “After accounting for tobacco, clinical, and socioeconomic factors, marijuana use was not associated with the overall adverse pregnancy outcome.”

It goes on to say:

Likewise, in women with cord homogenate and serum cotinine data (n=765), marijuana use was not associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes (adjusted odds ratio, 1.02; 95% confidence interval, 0.18-5.66). Admission rates to NICUs were not statistically different between groups (16.9% users vs. 9.5% non-users, P=0.12).

They admit that “marijuana use was still associated with composite morbidity or death in neonates,” but only after accounting for “tobacco, racial, and other illicit drug use.”

It remains to be seen how cannabis use during pregnancy differs between ethnic groups.

Adjusting the results to exclude tobacco harm is also suspicious. Especially if both cannabis and tobacco use were self-reported.

Methodological problems of the study

As always, researchers like to use specific tools that provide the expected results. This study is no different from many studies presenting cannabis as a toxic substance.

Here are the problems with the study claiming that cannabis sends pregnant women to the hospital:

1. It is an observational study. Researchers cannot find any victims. The other paper cited (linking cannabis to autism) was aware of this limitation. This current study ignores the issue and cites observational studies as scientific evidence.
2. This study is based on the population of pregnant “humans” in Ontario, Canada. While it is safe to assume that what is true of Ontario’s pregnant women is also true of Montana, for example, the specific population sampling limits the generality of the results.
3. As already mentioned, the data in this and the other studies are based on self-reports. What kind of cannabis did the women use? sativa? indica? Strains low in THC and high in CBD? How strong was it? What was the terpene profile like? What were the primary shipping methods? What about other non-cannabis related hospital visits? Maybe these 20 out of 100,000 women would also go to an emergency room because of a bruise or abrasion. How was the mental health of these women?
4. The article mentions the use of multivariable logistic regression models to identify cannabis and pregnancy risk factors. However, the researchers don’t provide any details about these models, including the variables used or how they measured them.
5. This paper focuses on acute care visits related to cannabis and compares them to acute care visits for non-cannabis substance use as a control. But the researcher’s choice of control introduces bias. Cannabis and other “non-cannabis substances” are not comparable.

Cannabis sends pregnant women to the hospital: study

Should You Use Cannabis for Morning Sickness? That’s a question for you and your doctor. Whether cannabis use during pregnancy leads to problems, including stillbirth, is still unclear.

A Toronto Star article on this study interviewed a number of doctors who said cannabis use during pregnancy was a bad idea. They also abusively referred to pregnant women as “pregnant people.”

But at the end of the article, buried at the bottom, was a female doctor, Dr. Lisa Graves who dared to tell the truth.

She said there is too little research on cannabis use during pregnancy.

Of course, “cannabis use” is not an issue. I “don’t use caffeine”. I’m drinking a cup of coffee. Sometimes I have two or three. I rarely have a fourth.

When my sister-in-law was pregnant, her doctor also said, “One cup of coffee a day is fine.” Apparently too much coffee is harmful to an unborn child.

And it could be that too much cannabis is harmful to them too. It could be that in the future, more rigorous studies will show that more than 10mg of THC daily is detrimental to healthy development.

The problem is that we don’t have any conclusive studies on the subject. Does cannabis send pregnant women to the hospital? No, women send themselves to the hospital.

Your cannabis use could be the reason for the visit. But this study tells us very little (if anything) beyond that.