It’s almost too taboo to discuss: pregnant women smoking marijuana. It’s a dirty little secret for women, particularly during the harrowing first trimester, who turn to cannabis for relief from nausea and stress.
Pregnant women in Jamaica use marijuana regularly to relieve nausea, as well as to relieve stress and depression, often in the form of a tea or tonic.
In the late 1960s, grad student Melanie Dreher was chosen by her professors to perform an ethnographic study on marijuana use in Jamaica to observe and document its usage and its consequences among pregnant women.
Dreher studied 24 Jamaican infants exposed to marijuana prenatally and 20 infants that were not exposed. Her work evolved into the book Women and Cannabis: Medicine, Science and Sociology, part of which included her field studies.
Most North American studies have shown marijuana use can cause birth defects and developmental problems. Those studies did not isolate marijuana use, however, lumping cannabis with more destructive substances ranging from alcohol and tobacco to meth and heroin.
In Jamaica, Dreher found a culture that policed its own ganja intake and considers its use spiritual. For the herb’s impact when used during pregnancy, she handed over reports utilizing the Brazelton Scale, the highly recognized neonatal behavioral assessment that evaluates behavior.
The profile identifies the baby’s strengths, adaptive responses and possible vulnerabilities. The researchers continued to evaluate the children from the study up to 5 years old. The results showed no negative impact on the children, on the contrary they seemed to excel.
Plenty of people did not like that answer, particularly her funders, the National Institute on Drug Abuse. They did not continue to flip the bill for the study and did not readily release its results.
“March of Dimes was supportive,” Dreher says. “But it was clear that NIDA was not interested in continuing to fund a study that didn’t produce negative results. I was told not to resubmit. We missed an opportunity to follow the study through adolescence and through adulthood.”
Now dean of nursing at Rush University with degrees in nursing, anthropology and philosophy, plus a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University, Dreher did not have experience with marijuana before she shipped off for Jamaica.
The now-marijuana advocate says that Raphael Mechoulam, the first person to isolate THC, should win a Pulitzer. Still, she understands that medical professionals shy from doing anything that might damage any support of their professionalism, despite marijuana’s proven medicinal effects, particularly for pregnant women.
Dr. Melanie Dreher’s study isn’t the first time Jamaican ganja smoking was subjected to a scientific study. One of the most exhausting studies is Ganja in Jamaica—A Medical Anthropological Study of Chronic Marijuana Use by Vera Rubin and Lambros Comitas, published in 1975. Unfortunately for the National Institute of Mental Health’s Center for Studies of Narcotic and Drug Abuse, the medical anthropological study concluded:
Despite its illegality, ganja use is pervasive, and duration and frequency are very high; it is smoked over a longer period in heavier quantities with greater THC potency than in the U.S. without deleterious social or psychological consequences [our emphasis].
If you like this post, then you can learn how to make your own cannabis oil. There are instructional videos as well as written instructions that will show you how to produce your own.
Source: Karmajello via I Read Culture
The governments response to the TIMES editorial supporting ending cannabis prohibition:
“Any discussion on the issue should be guided by science and evidence, not ideology and wishful thinking.”
Sorry, the government has no credibility since it has actively ignored / skewed and buried science that doesn’t support its ‘ideology and wishful thinking’.
Prohibitionists supported seriously flawed research that supported their position and cut funding to Dr. Dreher’s study when it didn’t support their position, to the detriment of all humanity!
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/93/2/254.short Look it up…. Somebody is offering some information. No harm to the babies. http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/1957518 and if any good effects have happened, they can not only be explained away but appear to be insignificant.
Narcotics police are an enormous, corrupt international bureaucracy … and now fund a coterie of researchers who provide them with ‘scientific support’ … fanatics who distort the legitimate research of others. … The anti-marijuana campaign is a cancerous tissue of lies, undermining law enforcement, aggravating the drug problem, depriving the sick of needed help, and suckering well-intentioned conservatives and countless frightened parents.”
— William F. Buckley,
Commentary in The National Review, April 29, 1983, p. 495
I smoked (not the indica that we have today,
didn’t have it then) but sativa, when pregnant with my first child. She is 42 now and is an over achiever, always has been. My second child, I didn’t smoke at all, she is an under achiever. Always has been. This is what I know.
As a nurse practitioner who has authorized many for the use of cannabis, I am happy to see this old study revisited. Pregnancy is one of the most controversial areas of cannabis use. I’ve read that there is risk of low birth rate and theoretical concern for hormonal disruption of male fetus from pregnant mothers using cannabis. As bad as that sounds, most prescription drugs have far worse risk. Check out my middle of the road clinical site on using cannabis rationally. http://www.RationalCannabis.com
Yes! = Judy=
Same here, with my Son, at 34!! = Judy=
Prohibition = You don’t own your own body = You have owners! Greedy ones that suppress this wonderful planet to the detriment of all humanity!! Nutrition, Paper, Clothing, Fuel, Oil, Building….. End deforestation, heal the planet, feed the world…naaaa, demonize it! Whilst their at it, wipe Tesla from the history books to, and don’t educate the masses on money creation… GovernMent – Mind Control specialists…. corrupt, satanic, paedos… best keep giving them our tax money huh!!
If you’re willing to chance your unborn child’s health on one non-peer-reviewed study done in Jamaica, I’m guessing you’re the same type of person who ‘just knows’ GMOs are harmful, even though the studies say they’re fine.
If you’re going to take these studies so far out of context to the point they’re meaningless, just stick to what you ‘already know.’
My son is 25, excelled throughout school until high school when he realized there was nothing in the cirriculum that would challenge him. He dropped out after 3 or 4 attempts at trying to “fit the mold”, went to work fulltime at 16 and was managing a grocery store by 19. He is now in another profession and his salary has increased by over 60% since he started. He is making more money at 25 than I made anytime in my life including my years in management and his carreer is just starting. My wife and I smoked weed throughout her pregnancy with him and we were always honest with him about drugs and alcohol and tobbaco. He never liked cigarette smoke and thus has never smoked, tried weed once, didn’t like it, did the “getting drunk” thing with his friends when younger and found little joy in that, so only has the odd drink. Just the facts
Care to show us the studies that claim GMOs are fine?
I myself am a heavy pot smoker, I support legalization. My brothers fiances mother smoked when she was pregnant with her. She is violent, obsessive compulsive and socially inept. There is no possible way that smoking during pregnancy can be good for the baby. I’m not saying it’s harmful, but to risk ur child just to prevent some nausau, cmon ladies, buck up