How Does Marijuana Affect Pregnant Women

There are many people asking the same question; is marijuana beneficial or detrimental to pregnant women? In a hunt for some answers, researchers have realized that it is an incredibly controversial topic, and doctors do not have a general answer. There is no straight proof that indicates an increase in the amount of women using cannabis while pregnant, according to the director of the El Paso County Health Department. However, it turns out that two to five percent of women used marijuana while pregnant. Since marijuana has been legalized in Colorado, that number is going to go up, so it is important to know how that is going to affect people. Chelsea Puig is a medical cannabis patient and during her pregnancy, she states that she used marijuana when she had awful nausea that had brought her wait down almost a hundred pounds. But she didn’t just start off with marijuana

“I tried. I tried what the doctors had told me to do, and it wasn’t working,” Puig stated.

In the end, she ended up deciding to go with marijuana.

“There are large numbers of us. Most of us are closeted,” she added.

Dr. Chris Nevin-Woods states that there is research that smoking while pregnant actually does have an impact on children later on in life.

“You may not know that that fetus who was exposed is having cognitive, learning problems, attention problems, that their IQ is lower than it would have been if their mom had not used marijuana,” the doctor said.

Neurologist Dr. Malik Hasan does not agree.

“In modest or moderate quantities I think that there’s no evidence, so far, that is harmful. If anything the known effect of the cannabis is neural protective, so if anything it’s likely to be helpful through the birthing process for the fetus,” he refuted.

“She knows how to operate the tablet and count and do memory games like that, board games, so I would say developmentally she’s where she should be. I’m a bit biased. Of course, we all want to think our kids are amazing,” Puig concluded.