Study: Dispensaries Recommend Marijuana To Pregnant Women, Against Medical Advice
New research from Denver Health finds 70 percent of marijuana dispensaries advised a researcher posing as a pregnant woman in first trimester to take marijuana to treat morning sickness.
A Denver Health study reports that most dispensaries recommend marijuana to pregnant women with morning sickness, contrary to medical advice.
A researcher posing as a pregnant woman called 400 Colorado dispensaries asking about products for morning sickness. Denver Health researcher Dr. Torri Metz says 70 percent recommended marijuana, even though prior research shows pot use in pregnancy may have adverse effects on the fetus.
Could medical cannabis be the new THALIDOMIDE? Fears of a crisis as doctors consider doling marijuana-based medicines out to pregnant mothers despite evidence the drug can damage foetuses
The researchers were pretending to be pregnant to see how cannabis — legal for medical reasons in the U.S. state of Colorado since 2000 and fully legal since 2014 — was being dispensed. The answers they received offer a worrying insight into the booming medical marijuana industry.
‘After eight weeks [of pregnancy], everything should be good with consuming alcohol and weed,’ one dispensary assistant replied.
‘When I was pregnant and started to feel nauseous, I did not smoke [cannabis] more than two times a day,’ recommended the proprietor of another clinic.
‘Edible [marijuana] would not hurt the child,’ reassured another, telling the woman, wrongly, that something ‘going through your digestional tract’ will have no effect on an unborn child.
Of the 277 dispensaries that recommended cannabis as a cure for morning sickness, three-quarters then attempted to sell a version of the drug containing THC, the chemical that gives users a ‘high’.
Many also advised their pregnant patients to keep their consumption of this intoxicating drug secret from their doctor.
‘The doctor will probably just tell you that marijuana is bad for kids and try pushing pills on you,’ said one. ‘I do not know if the baby doctors are chill or not, [so] do not go stoned when you talk to them,’ warned another.
Perhaps those doctors had good reason for their reservations about cannabis. For the Colorado research paper, published in the journal Obstetrics and Gynaecology earlier this year, highlights cannabis as a matter of growing concern to medical practitioners across the world.
Increasingly, marijuana is being sold for medical reasons. Yet this ‘medical’ marijuana is very far from being the safe, natural healthcare product its often-rapacious suppliers would have us believe.
Associations Between Prenatal Cannabis Exposure and Childhood Outcomes
Conclusions and Relevance This study suggests that prenatal cannabis exposure and its correlated factors are associated with greater risk for psychopathology during middle childhood. Cannabis use during pregnancy should be discouraged.
