We spoke to the author of this new study about prenatal cannabis exposure
When weighing the risks and benefits of cannabis, “many nuances” are required, says Dr. David Baranger.
As more states end cannabis prohibition, use rates among pregnant people are increasing: Before the pandemic, about 7% of pregnant American women reported using cannabis, and that has only increased since then. But the question remains: is it safe?
National health organizations such as the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics advise pregnant women not to use cannabis, but this advice is based on inconclusive data suggesting that cannabis can cause low birth weight, mental disorders, and neurological problems that manifest themselves later in life manifest life.
A new research letter published in JAMA Pediatrics by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis. Missouri, suggests that prenatal cannabis exposure is “associated with persistent susceptibility to broad-spectrum psychopathology as children progress into early adolescence,” which “may result in greater risk of psychiatric disorders and problem substance use.”
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Leafly spoke to the study’s lead author, Dr. David Baranger, a neuroscientist in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Baranger’s research focuses on psychopathology and substance use disorders. He spoke to us about the current study and the challenges of scientific research with cannabis.
“Cannabis is not benign even though it is a plant. It’s not a zero-risk substance for the child,” he told Leafly in a Zoom interview this week. “We believe there is some evidence that cannabis may have some negative consequences for an individual’s offspring. It’s not a huge effect, even if it were causal… At this point, we can’t say cannabis is definitely better or worse than anything else.”
The data comes from an ongoing 10-year study
The letter’s conclusions are based on a review of data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, the country’s largest long-term study to date of brain development in adolescents. The ABCD study, conceived in 2013 and launched in September 2015, is a decades-long study tracking the behavior and brain development of approximately 12,000 children in the United States. Data collection is done through a mix of questionnaires, interviews, games, genetic testing and MRIs.
The ABCD study, supported by organizations including the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, aims to assess how altered biology in nine- and ten-year-olds interacts with childhood activities, including “exercise, video games” . , social media, unhealthy sleep habits and smoking” as they age. The study includes questions about cannabis, but does not focus exclusively on cannabis use.
Members of the Washington University research team analyzed data collected through questionnaires with parents about their cannabis use during pregnancy; they did not conduct any interviews or tests with subjects themselves. The ongoing study offers some of the best data for researchers in an area that Baranger told Leafly has been “in a crisis for the last 10 years.”
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“Previous work in the prenatal cannabis world has had to depend on relatively small sample sizes: ten, thirty, maybe a hundred participants,” Baranger said. “And that makes it difficult to draw any conclusions. We realized that the questions we’re really interested in will require tremendous sampling to answer,” he continued. “You need hundreds, if not thousands, or hundreds of thousands of people to answer those questions.”
Baranger and his co-authors divided individual participants into three groups: those who reported cannabis use only before they knew they were pregnant, those who used cannabis before and after the mother knew about the pregnancy, and those who stated that they did not use cannabis during pregnancy.
They then used longitudinal assessments from the first two years of data between June 2016 and October 2018, and annual follow-ups in 2019 and 2020.
Of the more than 10,000 people studied, only about 600 said they had used cannabis either before or before and after their pregnancy. And the questions weren’t necessarily designed to get the information Baranger and his team are looking for. Controls for genetic and other substance covariates were performed, such as B. Alcohol and tobacco use by parents.
“We tried to control everything we had that could be an index of pre-existing risks, such as family history and parental use, and whether the child himself had used drugs up to that point. We control genetic risk for mental health disorders, including cannabis use disorders. This study is a first attempt to unpack it with a large sample, but there is much more to do.”
Pitfalls in cannabis research
“The new and changing legal aspect of cannabis has made it possible to find funding for studies where you recruit people who use cannabis.”
dr David Baranger, neuroscientist at Washington University
Because cannabis is federally illegal, its use can’t really be investigated in real-time. Rather, these data are based on self-reports by the parents and subsequent correlations that are not necessarily causal. The letter states that the research team’s findings may be biased based on “a small sample of prenatal cannabis-exposed offspring, possible underreporting of use during pregnancy, inaccurate data on timing/frequency/level of cannabis exposure and the lack of data on some potential confounders.”
“They have a questionnaire that asks people about their drug use when they are pregnant. And it was “Have you been using any drug, including cannabis” – and cannabis was a sub-question – “when you found out you were pregnant?” taking medication, or haven’t you stopped?” That’s our measure of cannabis use,” says Baranger, “which is very imperfect. Will they remember how much cannabis they used? Maybe? Maybe not. And they didn’t really ask that question.”
Baranger told Leafly that he personally supports the legalization of cannabis and that “we need a lot more research on this topic” before making any definitive statements. However, funding cannabis-related research, let alone getting it peer-reviewed, remains a major challenge. The lack of research into prenatal cannabis exposure can be attributed in part to federal bureaucracy and a flawed system for determining which studies get included in credible scientific journals.
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Other authors of the study have raised funds for future long-term studies aimed at studying pregnant cannabis users and their children’s development, but these will likely take years to begin.
Baranger told Leafly that creating a study that requires recruiting pregnant people takes a long time and requires negotiation through an extraordinary amount of bureaucracy.
While some may find the paper’s findings troubling, Baranger said many FDA-approved substances recommended for pregnant women carry their own risks and parents should feel empowered to make their own decisions. The advice against cannabis use, for him at least, comes from a place of harm reduction and risk reduction.
“There’s a risk, and you have to weigh that benefit,” he said. “I think some of the concerns about drug use are overblown. And I think a lot of nuances are required to unpack them. That should be taken into account when making your decision about what is best for you and your child.”
More on cannabis and pregnancy
Amelie Williams
New York-based freelance cannabis journalist Amelia Williams is a graduate of San Francisco State University’s journalism program and a former budtender. Williams has contributed to GreenState, MG Magazine, Culture Magazine and Cannabis Now, Kirkus Reviews and The Bold Italic of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Check out Amelia Williams’ articles
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