Pot Use In Pregnancy Is Going Up. Here's What We Know So Far About Its Effects

Pregnant women are using more pot than they used to, according to a large survey of 200,000 women in the U.S. While rates of use are still low overall among pregnant women, they’ve increased a dramatic 62 percent over the past 12 years, rising from 2.4 percent in 2002 to 3.9 percent in 2014, with young women primarily driving the increase. While only about 2.1 percent of women ages 26 to 44 used marijuana while pregnant, 7.5 percent of women 18 to 25 have done the same. Experts aren’t sure why pot use has increased among pregnant women, and especially younger pregnant women. One leading theory is that the growing acceptance of medical marijuana as a treatment for nausea may have encouraged women to use cannabis to help them cope with morning sickness. This may especially be the case for women who have an extreme version of pregnancy nausea called hyperemesis gravidarum, according to an accompanying editorial written by scientists at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Studies are still emerging about cannabis’ potential effect on a developing fetus, but early research suggests there may be some immediate and long-lasting consequences for a newborn’s birth weight and a child’s memory and verbal reasoning skills. What we know about pot and pregnancy The truth is that scientists don’t know a lot of about how cannabis affects a growing fetus, because it’s difficult to isolate pot use from other factors in a pregnant ...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news