Positive medical news about marijuana and mothers

Federally funded medical research shows that marijuana is not linked to autism.

Drinking, smoking, and consuming marijuana during pregnancy is never recommended. Throughout history, women have consumed alcohol, particularly during times when clean water was hard to find but infant mortality was high. Advances in medicine have determined that some activities, such as drinking and smoking cigarettes, can harm the baby. Nobody says that expectant women should drink alcohol, flowers or cigarettes. But early on, when a woman doesn't know she's pregnant, she may have engaged in these habits

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One of the concerns surrounding cannabis is how it can affect a baby's development. Although more research is still needed, two new studies have been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that provide some good news. The first study focused on determining whether maternal cannabis use during early pregnancy is associated with the risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in children.

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This study included 178,948 mother-child combinations. The children were born between 2011 and 2019 to pregnant Kaiser Permanente members from Northern California who were being screened for prenatal cannabis use during pregnancy. Statistical analysis was conducted from February 2023 to March 2024. The results suggest that maternal cannabis use during early pregnancy was not associated with ASD in children, but additional research should be conducted to replicate the results.

Another study published this week found that maternal cannabis use during early pregnancy was not associated with speech and language disorders, global delay or motor delay. The marijuana and child development study included 119,976 pregnancies among 106,240 unique pregnant individuals.

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One reason for the study is that with the increasing legalization of marijuana, there is increasing debate about whether marijuana is a cause of baby development. However, one study did not document associations between maternal prenatal cannabis use and adverse birth outcomes, including preterm birth and low birth weight. There is little research that has examined the association between maternal cannabis use before birth and developmental outcomes in childhood. This study was conducted to provide scientific facts surrounding this information.

More research needs to be done and just like alcohol and cigarettes which are harmful to the body, no one is saying that it is good to use “Why Expect” but that it is good to have information based on facts based.