Clinical Trials
Cannabis for Pregnant Women Reportedly Does Not Affect Cognition in Children
Cannabis for pregnant women has previously been a grey area, when it comes to how it affects a child’s mental health and acuity. Prenatal cannabis exposure, and the notion that cannabis use during pregnancy could harm the development of a child, has led to strict legal policies in the UK, sometimes resulting in punishment as severe as mothers being separated from their newborn children.
However now, after almost six years of comparing results in a landmark study there is almost no evidence to support this belief about cannabis. Researchers took decades worth of data from multiple universities and health institutes in the US, analysed them in a comparative study, and have found that prenatal cannabis exposure does not lead to cognitive impairment in children.
The journal Frontiers in Psychology published this review, showing that there were almost no significant statistical differences between children who were, or were not, exposed to cannabis prenatally.
While research has shown previously that newborn children’s physical development appeared to be unaffected by cannabis exposure, whether or not it could affect cognition had not been explored on this larger scale. This means many legal decisions have been made in the past based on selected smaller studies, or anecdotal evidence.
"I wanted to see if the huge concerns were warranted"
The review’s lead author, Dr. Torres, Professor of Psychology at Columbia, noted that these smaller studies have often been pointed to by authorities to punish use of cannabis for pregnant women, before or even sometimes after giving birth.
“I wanted to see if the huge concerns we’ve had as a society around prenatal marijuana exposure were warranted,” she explained in a phone interview with Forbes magazine.
Dr. Torres noted that “statistical differences between groups get a lot of attention in both scientific and media circles, but often say little or nothing about the clinical impact of such differences, if they exist at all.”
“Just because two groups are different doesn’t mean one group needs help,” she said. Small differences between groups may have been interpreted as evidence of impairment because researchers in this area have been actively pursuing unfavorable results and working from a bias.
“There’s an assumption that even though children are born healthy and normal, there’s an impact that we can’t see, that we just have to wait for them to grow up to see the impairment,” Dr. Torres said.
“All these studies can tell us is that there’s an association between performance differences and marijuana.” Dr. Torres continued. And the vast majority of such studies suggest that meaningful differences in performance just aren’t there.
Cannabis for pregnant women: Biased legislation too punitive
In the absence of research examining potential links between substance abuse and child abuse reports, healthcare providers seem to think they should provide false information to scare women straight and force them to make “good decisions” they wouldn’t otherwise.
This is true here in the UK, as well as overseas, and more research is needed to provide any causal links between prenatal cannabis use and children’s cognition, especially if lawmakers are ever considering taking a child’s mother away from them.
