Victimless...US women increasingly use pot during pregnancy

Posted on: December 19, 2016 at 11:39:11 CT

U.S. women are increasingly using pot during pregnancy, sometimes for morning sickness. That's according to an analysis of annual U.S. government drug surveys.

Though the actual numbers are small, researchers and others say the trend raises concerns because of evidence linking the drug with low birth weights and other problems.



In 2014, almost 4 percent of pregnant women said they'd recently used marijuana. That's up from 2.4 percent in 2002.

The study was published online Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

A separate study in the same journal found that almost 10 percent of adult marijuana users in the United States have used it at least partly for medical reasons; 20 percent of these users live in states where medical marijuana isn't legal.


http://www.foxnews.com/health/2016/06/10/combination-marijuana-and-tobacco-in-pregnancy-may-compound-risks.html

Smoking both marijuana and tobacco during pregnancy may create greater health risks than cigarettes alone, according to a recent U.S. study.

"In co-users of both marijuana and cigarettes we noted an increase in smaller babies, earlier deliveries, asthma, and pregnancy-related hypertension," Dr. Diana Racusin, an author of the study, told Reuters Health by email.

As marijuana becomes legal in more places, more women are using the drug while pregnant, partly because they view it as less risky than other substances, said Racusin, a maternal-fetal medicine fellow at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.