Recently after a shoot, I watched a female talent smoking weed while pregnant. The required paperwork was all signed and the shoot was over, so from a legal perspective, I had nothing to complain about. However, the woman is several weeks pregnant, and listening to her justify getting high with an excuse that it helps her with morning sickness made me…. well…sick. Children deserve the best fighting chance at life that we can give them. But my smoking weed while pregnant talent was handicapping her baby before it was ever born. Nothing says mommy loves her child like sending some cannabis down the umbilical cord.
You would think just as alcohol use is damaging to a fetus, that mood-altering THC would be considered a threat to a pregnant woman’s baby’s health. Unfortunately with the legalization of its use spreading in the western world, there is a growing consensus that this happy drug is harmless. As though in collusion with the manufacturers of all the new THC enriched products hitting the open markets, there has been a rise in funding of pseudo-scientific papers whose purpose seems to be nothing more than to tote the harmless mantra; by amalgamating the data of inconclusive, subject set contaminated studies to justify their hypothesis. Forbes even ran an article as recently as May 2020, to promote the belief that smoking weed while pregnant is harmless to one’s offspring. Still, the CDC warns that we should take precautions regardless.
My own mother could be best described as a complicated mixture of “I am woman hear me roar” and narcissism, topped by an overwhelming fear of being alone or going anywhere she didn’t know. She was a baby-boomer, of the original“Me” generation and when she passed in the early 2000s, we had never reconciled our differences. It took me years of tracking down others to learn about the events surrounding my conception and childhood. Needless to say, watching my talent smoking weed while pregnant truly struck close to home for me.
Smoking weed while pregnant made me
Direct from the mouths of people who knew her, my mom got pregnant because she was getting high while trying to attract my father’s attention. I was also told about her smoking weed while pregnant to ease her morning sickness, even though I never saw her toking up as a kid. Maybe she came to the conclusion that my behavioral problems and certain physical deformities were the result of her drug use. I’ll never know, because like so many weed smokers, she was incapable of taking responsibility for her actions and instead buried the entire issue by never speaking of it again. One thing for certain, she regretted her pregnancy and made me feel like a parasite that had invaded her uterus.
The lack of consistent data in cannabis research stems first in part from the fact that marijuana use had to be self reported and in an environment where the drug was deemed illicit. Second when correlated with the mother’s tendency to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol, both detrimental to fetal development, it was found that those reporting marijuana use also had a high correlation of cigarette smoking and or drinking, so determining that smoking weed while pregnant as the cause of anything demands more exacting sample sets so that the other factors can be eliminated. In addition studies lack a consensus on regular marijuana use. Unlike a laboratory study were the level of consumption would be constant and monitored, we can’t even reliably calculate comparison groups of regular use, heavy use or even effects on different trimesters against mothers having zero exposure to THC. But this all may soon be possible with the widespread availability of edibles and lotions and other means to increase THC consumption. In an environment which does not judge the mother for its use, soon we should be able to measure with more exacting accuracy the true prevalence and effects of THC consumption on fetal development…too bad it may prove to be too late for those it affects.
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