The Drug Report
The Drug Report
Rising Marijuana Use During Pregnancy: Health Risks
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Yes or no? Do you believe nicotine is not addictive?
Speaker 2:I believe nicotine is not addictive. Yes, Congressman, cigarettes and nicotine clearly do not meet the classic definitions of addiction.
Speaker 3:I don't believe that nicotine for our products are addictive. I believe nicotine is not addictive.
Speaker 4:I believe that nicotine is not addictive. I believe that nicotine is not addictive.
Speaker 1:Hi everyone. This is Luke Nifiratos. I'm your co-host of the TDR podcast. I want to thank our two sponsoring organizations. That's SAM, smart Approaches to Marijuana, as well as FDPS, the Foundation for Drug Policy Solutions, cover marijuana policy and drug policy and beyond. So thank you, as always, for joining us here on the podcast.
Speaker 1:Today we're going to talk a little bit about pregnancy and marijuana, because this is a rising issue that we've been tracking for a number of years. This really the trend of increasing marijuana use really was highlighted when then Surgeon General Dr Jerome Adams, in 2019, issued the first ever advisory from the Surgeon General's office on excuse me, not first ever first time in 40 years from the Surgeon General's office on excuse me not. First ever first time in 40 years, the Surgeon General's office had issued an advisory on marijuana and his chief concern was youth use of marijuana reaching unprecedented levels across the country, but particularly pregnant mothers, their usage was rising. This was back in 2019. I encourage you to check it out. But basically, the Surgeon General talked about how today's marijuana is nothing like the marijuana of years before. For those of you who don't know I think many of our listeners do know that marijuana back a couple of decades ago was 2% to 3% potency of THC. Now we're talking about up to 99% potent products. It's a totally different drug, more addictive, more harmful to your health, and so it's particularly concerning to our nation's doctors and public health associations and experts when they see that pregnant mothers are using this more than ever. Well, there's a new study out. Cnn just did a very big write-up on this issue because this study was just released today from Kaiser, their division of research in Pleasanton, california. They released a study that found an increase in your risk of gestational hypertension and preeclampsia if you are a pregnant mother and using marijuana, and they talk about how this rate of pregnant mothers using marijuana has actually more than doubled over the last two decades. And you know so this is just kind of only the latest in a slew of harms that we're beginning to understand come along with use during pregnancy. They talk about how there are increased risks for the child of lower birth weights, preterm birth and also, if you're using while pregnant, a much greater chance of higher admission rates to neonatal intensive care units. So it's really not, you know, it's not just kind of a minor issue. When you're talking about use during pregnancy, this is something that comes with very serious risks to the mother as well as the child, and so this is something that you know.
Speaker 1:You put this in the greater context of what the marijuana industry has been doing. Just a few years ago, denver Health here in Colorado, where I'm from they're one of the top healthcare institutions here in the state, nonprofit they did a study where they posed as mothers in their first trimester and they called every single pot shop in the city of Denver, which was more than 600 at the time, and what they found was more than 80% of the medical quote. Unquote. Medical marijuana dispensaries were recommending marijuana to those researchers posing as pregnant mothers, and around 70% of all of the dispensaries the recreational included were recommending marijuana to those folks who they thought were pregnant mothers to help them with nausea during their first trimester. So absolutely astonishing that the industry is normalizing this drug for obviously a whole laundry list of things that they claim it cures. But the fact that they're targeting pregnant mothers and saying that this can help, when now research study after research study and today's study is no different is telling us all of the many very serious concerns that we should have about using during pregnancy. This shouldn't even be a debate. It shouldn't even be a debate, it shouldn't even be a discussion. And yet we have literal cannabis companies called Canamama where they're normalizing pregnant mothers and mothers who use marijuana. You see other attempts from the industry to normalize mothers or soon-to-be mothers as using marijuana. And it's really no different than the history we saw with alcohol, where the alcohol industry, and even to this day, is trying to normalize this idea of wine, moms, et cetera, but has always pitched alcohol to mothers, wine moms, et cetera but has always pitched alcohol to mothers. And really it seems like you see this happen with a lot of just addictive substances or mind-altering substances, just in general, mommy's a little helper from even over a century ago. So this study, definitely check it out. It'll be in our TDR newsletter which you can subscribe to at the drug reportorg. You will get that here tomorrow.
Speaker 1:But this is just a really frightening study. You know, one other finding they said was you know, if you're using marijuana in early pregnancy, 19% greater risk of placental abruption. So you know that literally means that. You know that's the organ, the placenta. You know that literally means that, uh, you know that's the organ that the um, the placenta. You know the organ provides oxygen nutrients to the fetus. It's called a placenta. In an abruption, it suddenly detaches from the side of the uterus, so it endangers the health of the mother and the developing baby. So, uh, very, very concerning that you know, almost a 20% increase in that risk. Um, so this is something we need to be talking to our public health officials about. It's about time that, in states where they've allowed this complete farce called quote unquote medical marijuana, the least they can do is put very stringent regulations in place that restrict the industry, that make them put warnings on their products for pregnant mothers, that they can really seriously penalize these bad actors that are pushing this narrative and they can educate the public about the fact that marijuana does not help with pregnancy. So, anyway, and another great resource, by the way, is the Academy of Pediatrics, which has issued several advisories on this issue of pregnant mothers and the use of marijuana, and of course, they're warning against it. So be sure to check out that information. Watch for the link here as it comes out in the newsletter.
Speaker 1:I want to wrap up by giving you the audio version of our highlight reel from our PROSPER Summit. Prosper, for those of you who don't know, is the new Canadian counterpart for the Foundation for Drug Policy Solutions we founded that in Canada't know is the new Canadian kind of counterpart for the Foundation for Drug Policy Solutions. We founded that in Canada. Kevin, in the time that he spends in Canada, is helping to grow it and working with a lot of other leaders on the ground there. This is really a Canadian-driven effort at this point because there's a dearth of leadership in Canada for sensible drug policy, but there's a lot of demand for it, so people are starting to rise to the call and so Prosper is just very much prospering.
Speaker 1:So check out this audio clip. I'm going to play it. It's about four and a half minutes and it'll give you just a taste of some of the incredible presentations that were given, talks that were given, questions that were asked. It just was a fantastic event attended by hundreds of Canadians and all of the major party leadership and people working on these issues in Canada. Definitely listen to it. It was a great event and we'll be doing it again next year. So with that, thank you all and hope you have a wonderful start to your week.
Speaker 5:My name is Will Jones and I'm very happy to be with you here today. Moi, c'est William. Je suis très content d'être ici avec vous. Ce matin, I gave out more Narcan, probably, than most people ever will in their life. So for me to be here, it's not about politics, it's not about a policy position, just to talk.
Speaker 6:We're really here for one reason, and that reason is to help decision makers and the public navigate this complicated issue with common sense, evidence, empathy, care, toward the goal of prevention. And when we lean on these lazy dichotomies intense police involvement or none at all you know a lot of treatment, none at all we get bad outcomes, and so so I think the good news is there's a lot of good news. Part of the good news is there are things that work and we're going to be highlighting that. He said to me.
Speaker 2:Brad, what stopped me from getting help wasn't stigma from drugs being illegal. It was a 16 week wait for the type of treatment that I needed. That's what stopped me. I hope you'll join me in feeling a sense of warmth that we are at last in a room together, talking about making a better place, free of judgment and blame. Looking out our windshield not necessarily in the rearview mirror we have immense, immense strengths and I hope we can continue this discussion and put some of them into better.
Speaker 7:Bc Housing has put consumption rooms in all their buildings. So where you have consumption rooms, you're going to have dealers, because when you're consuming something, you need to get it. We need dry housing.
Speaker 8:And unfortunately, many of my patients fall into this revolving door. Where they come into hospital, they receive excellent treatment and we put them right back into that circumstances In some ways. For me it's analogous to treating somebody with a gambling addiction in a facility and then discharging them right into a casino and saying good luck, we need to provide local treatment options to use so they can be close to their families and receive programming which is culturally safe.
Speaker 7:There is unanimous support from the community and youth for the creation of an Indigenous Youth Wellness Centre which will offer detox and residential treatment on Vancouver Island that, as we are creating programs for communities, we need to be really careful we're listening to what the communities want.
Speaker 6:I'm going to pound my drum here.
Speaker 3:This drum is an extension of my heart. It's an extension of most Indigenous communities. That's why we use the drum.
Speaker 4:I don't think that saving lives is just CPR. I don't think that saving a life is just Narcan or just housing. Saving a life is getting somebody in a condition to where they'll never need your help again. Saving a life is living a life helping someone get into a place where they can live a life free of addiction and the suffering that comes with it.
Speaker 3:No epidemic in the history of the world has ended by waiting for people to get sick and then trying to take care of them. That's not how COVID ended. That's not how HIV was brought under control. It's through prevention, stopping people from getting in trouble in the first place.
Speaker 2:Even the information that we do get out of the health authorities are so watered down and broad brush that it's not useful. So we've had to try to reconstruct things ourselves.
Speaker 7:It's serious what I talked about. You can't manage, what you can't measure. I really believe that.
Speaker 3:But most of them they are nurses teachers and they are hardworking taxpayers leading the next generation of Canadians.
Speaker 4:Their voices don't be heard.
Speaker 6:This is the beginning, though, and we do want to have discussions and dialogues. We want to bring people together. We want to bring people that may not agree together and find common ground. We want to come up with real solutions, actually, and promote those solutions. So you will hear from us. This is the very beginning, and, again, thank you all for coming today. Thank you.