It’s almost too taboo to discuss: pregnant women & 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.
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].
Source: Cannabis Effects
