Cannabis use risks unborn babies' health: study

[Lunar Loops]

Talk about spin...major headline, but then if you read the last line ("those women who took illicit drugs during pregnancy were also heavy smokers") it becomes a little clearer. Errr hello, come back when you have a study that isolates cannabis. This from ABC.net (Aus) (http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems...7/s1679893.htm) :
Cannabis use risks unborn babies' health: study

A new study has found that cannabis use by pregnant women has a significant negative effect on their babies' health.
The study was carried out by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre.
In what it describes as the largest study of its kind, the research centre analysed more than 400,000 live births over a five-year period, studying the effects of cannabis, opiods and stimulants, on the developing foetus.
Dr Lucy Burns says it showed that cannabis smoking had a major effect.
"Cannabis use seemed to have quite a significant impact on the baby in terms of the baby's weight being lower and born more often prematurely," she said.
Dr Burns says it places those babies at a disadvantage.
"The research suggests that if babies are born early and underweight it is an indicator for long-term negative outcomes, so they are significant indicators of someone who could well have problems later in life," she said.
She says they were also more likely to have to be admitted to neonatal intensive care units.
Dr Burns says while any drug use during pregnancy can be harmful to the unborn child, the effect of cannabis smoking has previously been down-played.
"I guess it's a little surprising in that we found cannabis use seemed to have quite a significant impact on the baby," she said.
Dr Burns says those women who took illicit drugs during pregnancy were also heavy smokers.

[Nature Boy]

Hahaha! That's absolutely pathetic. The title makes this huge claim and they've absolutely no evidence to back it up. On a more serious note, so-called "studies" like this adds to cannabis' negative reputation. Disgraceful really.

[The Doors]

Dr Burns says those women who took illicit drugs during pregnancy were also heavy smokers.

Of course they had to mention this at the very end.

Anyways personally I think abstenance would be good except maybe on a few occasions sounds reasonable. Woman have smoked cigarettes while pregnant for a long time now, and studies prove that cannabis is harmless, which is not the case for tobacco.

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