Posted on 01/01/2018 9:24:04 AM PST by MarvinStinson
California - A new study has found that smoking marijuana is increasing among pregnant women in California, which leads to health concerns about the unborn child.
The study was published on Dec. 26 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, according to Fox News, and used the medical records of 279,000 women residing in California who were on Kaiser Permanente, a health care service.
Women who agreed to participate were asked to answer a questionnaire when they were about eight weeks pregnant, and take a drug test to see if they tested positive for marijuana use. In the study, researchers found that marijuana consumption among pregnant women in the state has risen from 2009 to 2016 from 4.2 percent to 7.1 percent.
Kelly Young-Wolff, the study’s lead researcher, and Dr. Nancy Goler, a researcher, said their study shows how marijuana might potentially harm an unborn child.
"Our study is important because it addressed key limitations of prior studies by investigating trends in prenatal marijuana use using data from a large California health care system with gold standard universal screening for prenatal marijuana use," Goler and Young-Wolff told Reuters.
"We were concerned to find that the prevalence of marijuana use in pregnancy is increasing more quickly among younger females, aged 24 and younger, and to see the high prevalence of use in this age group," Young-Wolff said.
Both Young-Wolff and Goler noted marijuana was the “most commonly used illegal drug during pregnancy,” and could “impair fetal growth and neuro-development,” Reuters reported.
Marijuana use may be on the rise because recent legalization of its recreational use in some states "has made people think of the drug as less dangerous, even during pregnancy," according to Barbara Yankey, a researcher at Georgia State University.
"Because of the possibility of concurrent use of marijuana and other substances of abuse, the evidence of its direct association with preterm labor, fetal growth restriction, preterm birth, low birthweight and stillbirth is still debatable, though these adverse effects lean more towards an increased likelihood of occurrence," Yankey said.
“The more we study cannabis use during pregnancy, the more we are realizing how harmful it can be,” Dr. Marcel Bonn-Miller, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia said. She was not involved in the study.
California will make recreational marijuana possession legal in 2018.
RE: information is suppressed
Absolutely true. Info on the topic “disappears,” and I have been threatened a number of times. The Leftist thought police never sleep. Nevertheless, it is hard to ignore the self-evident effects, and official accident statistics.
So--let me get this right--a doctor testifying in 1937 that the AMA had not, at that time, conducted any controlled studies into the effects of marijuana use is all the evidence we need that marijuana is perfectly safe?
Just because a doctor testified in 1937 that the AMA had no data about deleterious effects of marijuana use does NOT mean that the effects weren't happening and that people were not noticing them. If you notice that someone who is a long-time drug abuser is incapable of functioning in a productive manner and behaves erratically, do you need to consult the medical literature to verify your suspicion that the person's behavior is because of the addiction?
Are there moderate smokers?
To be fair, about 25% of people age 35 or below still live with their parents, and that is related to the economy more than anything else. However, I do get your point--the 40 year old drug addict is probably never going to become self-sufficient, although his parents might tire of him being around the house and kick him out at some point.
There are differences between moderate and heavy marijuana smokers, by definition. I don't know exactly what the differentiation is, but it is based on number of uses within a specific time frame.
Thank you for posting all of those references to traffic fatalities related to increased marijuana use!
I spent my whole first pregnancy racked with guilt because I went out and drank one time prior to learning I was pregnant. I think the kid turned out okay, though.
If it does, somehow those medical uses have never made it into the medical literature in the form of controlled studies. Anecdotal stories are not evidence.
I read a story recently of a woman who had hyperemesis syndrome for 17 years before she was finally diagnosed. No doubt, one of her rationales for using marijuana all of that time was because she had heard that it calms nausea. In other words, her attempt to self-medicate was causing her problem.
and doesn’t have any bad side effects.
I've never heard that said; anyone who says that is a fool.
Apparently, you have never perused the NORML website. It promotes the idea that marijuana is perfectly safe. And NORML has been promoting legalization for decades.
Please stop spreading your anti-vax misinformation. A pregnant woman who gets the flu vaccine not only protects herself, but her baby, since the antibodies her body produces in response to the vaccine cross the placenta and are contained in breast milk.
As for "heavy metals"--I am not sure what you are even talking about. If that is a reference to the sodium azide or thiomersal used in some vaccines, the dose of mercury is extremely small, much lower than any established harmful threshold. A pregnant woman consumes much more mercury in a tuna sandwich than she would ever receive in a flu shot. Furthermore, the preservatives are not used in single-dose vaccine formulations, so it isn't a given that the vaccine even contains them.
“There are reasons that the society of 100 years ago wanted marijuana to be illegal, even if they are not reported because they don’t match the pro-legalization narrative/propaganda.”
No, there are not. If you remember the 50s and 60s (do you?) there was a very strong interest in publicizing every negative scrap that could be found about pot. Nothing was forgotten; nothing was suppressed.
There was no “pro-legalization narrative/propaganda.” You could get 99 years for a single seed in Texas, and there were no prospects for legalization.
If those who were hysterically desperate to suppress pot could have found one single medical or psychological fact to hang their hats on, we wouldn’t be where we are today.
By the way, William Randolph Hearst drove us into the Spanish-American War, and bragged about it. He had invested big time in tree farming, and didn’t want competition from hemp. It’s a fact.
It was easy for him to get pot lumped in with heroin, because nobody cared. White people didn’t smoke it, or know anything about it. With alcohol prohibition just ended, people were disgusted with the prohibitionists, and were happy to let them turn their attention to drugs, as long as they left alcohol alone.
None of your assumptions is correct.
Should I try to explain again, in simpler terms, or is this a lost cause?
Actually, I do remember the 60s and 70s, having grown up in the Bay Area of California, where there was a lot of cultural support for drug legalization of all kinds. Yep, I grew up right in the middle of that whole hippie culture and yes, it did shape me more than I would like to admit. I understand the pro-drug legalization narrative extremely well, because I was immersed in it during my childhood.
The laws against drug abuse were one thing. The cultural attitudes were another. The pro legalization narrative/propaganda has been very active since at least the 1970s--when was NORML founded?
If those who were hysterically desperate to suppress pot could have found one single medical or psychological fact to hang their hats on, we wouldn’t be where we are today.
There are two reasons that until recently, there was very little evidence on the effects of marijuana use. The first is that without any known medical use for marijuana (other than anecdotal stories), few researchers had any interest in studying it, when there were other pressing public health issues that needed attention. The second is that it is extremely difficult to get the DEA permits to study marijuana--it requires background checks, careful documentation of all uses of the substance from the time it arrives in the lab until it is used or destroyed, and high security storage in locked, theft-proof containers with access only to limited people.
Now, with the push to legalize marijuana, more researchers are willing to go through the arduous process of getting the permits and background checks to conduct research with cannabinols. So, in the last few years, the experimental documentation of deleterious effects of marijuana has begun to grow. It will become increasingly difficult to promote the narrative that marijuana is perfectly safe.
And those occurrences happen....wish you hadn’t racked yourself with guilt.
I’m talking about when you know you’re pregnant
“Actually, I do remember the 60s and 70s”
But not the 50s, and you remember the 60s and 70s in the wackadoodle capital of the world.
“it did shape me more than I would like to admit.”
Well, get the F over it. The rest of the country was nothing like that.
“The pro legalization narrative/propaganda has been very active since at least the 1970s—when was NORML founded?
A few wackadoodles being “active” is not a national trend. Besides, the key decades were the 50s and 60s, not the 70s.
“There are two reasons that until recently, there was very little evidence on the effects of marijuana use.”
No, you’re wrong about that, too.
“The first is that without any known medical use for marijuana (other than anecdotal stories)”
The earliest evidence of pot use goes back more than 30,000 years. It was a staple of Chinese herbal medicine for thousands of years. The medical uses are known.
“The second is that it is extremely difficult to get the DEA permits to study marijuana”
If there were the kind of deleterious effects that you have claimed, it would be obvious all around us. The Chinese certainly knew of any. The same sorts of stories would be told as are told about opium dens.
“Now, with the push to legalize marijuana, more researchers are willing to go through the arduous process”
With global warming out of fashion, dishonest “scientists” have to go somewhere.
“So, in the last few years, the experimental documentation of deleterious effects of marijuana has begun to grow.”
Well, dish it up. I also want to know who funded the research, and who performed it.
BTW, did you not read the congressional testimony posted above to the effect that the AMA knew of no harmful effects?
You are crazy. To think that a flu VACCINE protects a mother and her baby best. Remember the Hippocratic Oath. First, do no harm.
If the pregnant woman has therapeutic levels of vitamins (and minerals) in her, and if she is unstressed and able to get enough sleep, she will not get a bad case of the flu even if exposed. That would meet the criteria of first, doing no harm.
It’s insane to buy into giving a pregnant woman a shot into her muscle (bloodstream) filled with immune adjuvants, and all the other vaccine ingredients, believing it is somehow “protective,” while at the same time forbidding her an Advil or a drink of wine. It’s not biologically logical.
The idea of vaccines is genius. The formulation is PRIMITIVE SCIENCE. The dosing, the recommendations, are outmoded and dangerous to some. And no one is able to know to whom a vaccine is dangerous just yet. It’s quite the risk.
“Yes. And they usually did not drink while pregnant-——”
—
Uh,yes they did.
.
there are many more.
That was just a drop in the bucket.
I do not deal in anti-vax conspiracy theories. I deal only with scientific facts that are verifiable by experimentation.
I saw the heartbreak first hand of the loss of a newborn baby to a vaccine preventable disease. My friend was devastated. There is no way I would ever want to inflict that heartache on anyone. I will accept the well-characterized adverse effects of vaccines, which are orders of magnitude less severe than the diseases those vaccines prevent.
When a vaccine contains an adjuvant, it means that less of the toxic component—the antigen—can be used in the vaccine. That’s a win-win, in terms of cost and adverse events. Why would anyone prefer their child to get sick with microorganisms that continuously produce those toxins that cause severe illness and even death, when they can prevent that from happening in the first place. Answer: people who want more kids to die because they think that increased child death will prevent overpopulation prefer that option.
The AMA Chief Counsel's testimony is evidence - as opposed to what you've posted, which is purely hot air.
And as for the reasons for the ban, at least as interesting as the testimony itself were the Congressmen's responses: our minds are made up so don't confuse us with facts.
No most women did not.
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