Prenatal cannabis exposure associated with mental disorders in children

I’m glad this research is being done. I don’t use cannabis, but I also don’t frown upon it. However some of the conversations on the use of cannabis recently have changed from “it’s a drug, but it isn’t that bad” to “it is completely harmless”. Which in my opinion is very dangerous and could harm entire populations before we have enough research. In my opinion, it should be considered similar category as alcohol, cigarettes, fat and sugar, a national health issue and research needs to happen asap on various short term and long term effects.

Is this really surprising?<p>Any time I had used cannabis I felt like my IQ dropped 20-30 points and I would lose hours of my day where it was difficult for me to learn. It made doing household chores not terrible, but brought out a lot of panic inducing moments and erratic behavior. I was thinking about a 100k other things while doing one thing. Later on I realized I wasn&#x27;t even doing that one thing so well. Anything that drops cognitive abilities for a moment is going to be awful long term and especially for babies.<p>I know a lot of people think cannabis isn&#x27;t bad, but it is intellectually dishonest to disregard the broader effects of effects on cognition. I say that as someone who used to smoke a ton of cannabis.<p>Not having to rely on drugs to find calmness has made a profound change in my life, and I can&#x27;t believe that I used to turn to weed, alcohol, etc. when all I needed to be permanently (key word) happy was already present within me. Prior, when the effects went away I spent just as much time craving and suffering heavily.<p>That being said I don&#x27;t think it should be criminalized or anything like that. It is up to adults to do whatever, but it is useful to be honest as well. Not everyone uses it for epilepsy, none of the dispensaries here sell CBD products. Its all high THC products meant to &quot;fuck you up&quot;

The amount of research over last decade has been huge, even outside of this. It used to be the only way companies could research cannabis was by getting really crappy samples from a government grow house, but with legalization the supply of research samples and the quality of researchers willing to work on it has grown considerably.<p>This is a direct safety issue. I used to moderator one of the bigger cannabis subreddits and one of the bigger questions that always came up was whether it was safe to smoke while pregnant. The answer I always gave was that we just don&#x27;t know, and so it should be avoided. The lack of research though meant that people couldn&#x27;t make informed decisions, and the stereotype around cannabis being safe meant that people did not always err on the side of caution. Now there is something concrete we can point to.

“ 6 exposures (unplanned pregnancy; maternal alcohol, marijuana, and tobacco use early in pregnancy; pregnancy complications; and birth complications) independently associated with significant but small increases in CBCL total score. Among these 6, none increased the odds of crossing the threshold for clinically significant symptoms by itself. However, odds of exceeding this threshold became significant with 2 exposures (OR = 1.86, 95% CI 1.47–2.36), and increased linearly with each level of exposure (OR = 1.39, 95% CI 1.31–1.47), up to 3.53-fold for ≥4 exposures versus none”

This is going to be confounded surely... parents who use cannabis during pregnancy are not &#x27;the same as everyone else except they use cannabis&#x27;. They probably, or might I say, almost certainly, have higher rates of psychiatric disorders, the propensity for which they pass onto their children.<p>So the size of the effect will be less than what is claimed, but in any case don&#x27;t use cannabis during pregnancy.

These association studies are near useless. Every positive behavior and positive outcome are correlated, and every bad behavior and outcome are correlated.<p>Mothers who get high during their pregnancy are different from mothers who don&#x27;t.<p>A more informed one would be looking at women with seizures that are treated with cannabis and comparing them to women with the same disorder who aren&#x27;t. There are still differences but they&#x27;d be smaller.

I read this right after I got back from the marijuana store where a pregnant woman was buying weed. It made me uncomfortable. It just seems risky to me to take intoxicants while the babies brain is forming.

How could you possibly control for the major confounder of “having the kind of parent who would intentionally subject their unborn child to THC”?

Weed is bad for you, what a shocker. Like all drugs you have to weigh the positive effects with the negative. Generally it&#x27;s bad to do most rec drugs if pregnant or around kids.

I know my mother smoked cannabis when she was pregnant back in the 70s (hippie parents etc). Maybe it wasn&#x27;t related to that, but I did experience a number of mental disorders from my childhood to my late 20s.

&gt; In 2018, 4.7% of pregnant women reported cannabis use and 5.4% did in 2019<p>Holy cow, one in twenty woman are admitting to getting high when pregnant. I wouldn&#x27;t have ever thought it that high. But then again, both my and my wife&#x27;s moms smoked pot while pregnant.

One of my pet peeves is the oft repeated slogan “it’s not addictive”. And by definition, that’s true. But neither is Methamphetamine. But people still throw it around like it’s some kind of scientific blessing that you can’t form a dependency.<p>Also, I think the true cost of marijuana is the opportunity cost - it’s not just what it does to you, it’s what it takes from you - your motivation, potential etc. And it’s really quite toxic to your long term mental health, in devilishly insidious ways - and is usually accompanied by aggressively-defended self deceptions.

&quot;Associated with&quot; is basically meaningless in human or health studies.<p>I&#x27;m not saying there isn&#x27;t a causal link here, there probably is. I&#x27;m just saying this isn&#x27;t science, it&#x27;s excel. So we should do some actual science and know rather than just creating an ever bigger list of &quot;associated&quot; risks that no one can remember or compare or make much use of.

Good to see more research on cannabis but I find studies by association to be incredibly easy to push in one direction or another.<p>I&#x27;d be more inclined to believe that parents who smoke cannabis during pregnancy are more likely to be bad parents or live in a bad environment, which result into issues with their kids 15 years later.<p>Or maybe they keep smoking around their kids over their lifespan and that prolonged exposure is causing problems in the adolescence.<p>I find it hard to believe cannabis crossing the placenta would be causing issues 15 years after exposure and not affecting the children before.<p>Plenty of young kids are diagnosed (even overdiagnosed if we want to talk about the subject) with behavioural issues. Why is this study not finding any evidence of that?<p>That would be way stronger evidence.

Consuming weed during pregnancy is against Tupac&#x27;s Thug Life principles.

My wife uses cannabis for pain management and she used it through pregnancy. Her OBGYN was aware and didn&#x27;t recommend against it. Our daughter is 6 now and we still think about it. Anything she has trouble with, I always wonder; did we do this to her? Though I don&#x27;t know that there was a better choice available.<p>Are there effective painkillers that don&#x27;t have risks for developing babies? Is good for a developing baby to be receiving constant stress hormones from a mother in intense pain?

I can&#x27;t read the whole article, but just by opening its link it changes from a definitive conclusion to a &quot;may affect&quot;. It wouldn&#x27;t surprise me if weak correlation was presented as causation.

An interesting point to view at any drug (including alcohol and even coffee) is presence of social stigmas. Coffee has very mild (almost none) social stigma associated with its consumption: ppl would recommend to drink less if you are obviously overconsume it. Alcohol has somewhat harsh social stigma starting from certain point and actually some encouragement in small doses. Cannabis seems like has no stigma (outside of some circles) in small doses and somewhat mild for overconsumption. No research, just my observation, but i would like to see one.

During pregnancy I&#x27;d assume almost any exposure to anything that is not essential nutrients, pure air and pure water is bad to some measurable effect if we could measure it.<p>Even caffeine has negative measurable effects.

Could someone help me understand the mechanism of action that triggers mental problems from cannabis consumption? I recall it being a trigger for psychosis in some cases.

Missing from he abstract is effect size and variables controlled for. It&#x27;s almost like they want me to read the paper or something.

These things are a type of natural experiment.<p>The child is a secondary absorber of unhealthy parental decisions, some less obvious than others.

Unpaywalled paper on the same data, showing findings:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;journals.plos.org&#x2F;plosone&#x2F;article?id=10.1371&#x2F;journal.pone.0250235" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;journals.plos.org&#x2F;plosone&#x2F;article?id=10.1371&#x2F;journal...</a>

A lot of people are driving on it, too. I&#x27;m seeing a record number of red lights being run in Manhattan of all places. General disorder or correlation?

well - that explains like half of my childhood friends growing up.<p>Anxious, ADHD, depression, …<p>They were on a laundry list of SSRIs and mood stabilizers and they were only 15-17 y&#x2F;o

Why are pregnant women smoking weed to begin with?

Full title that wouldn’t fit: Prenatal cannabis exposure associated with mental disorders in children that persist into early adolescence

People also shouldn&#x27;t forget the effects that long term use has on mental health.

In Canada, we have neighbours who smoke weed and cultivate plants. It is pretty terrible .. our yards are so small and close together, we smell weed all the time. Pretty much since the laws have relaxed, we have not been able to use our yard in peace. We are concerned as we are exposing our kids to second hand smoke. The effects can&#x27;t be good. Million dollar houses and this is the crap we get.