The latest attack on cannabis consumers is an attack on pregnant and new mothers.
A quick search of peer reviewed, including longitudinal, studies clearly show no negative effect on infants born to mothers who used cannabis during pregnancy. Newborn Outcomes with M
aternal Marijuana Use in Jamaican Women, by Janice S. Hayes, J. Kevin Nugent, et al. Pediatric Nursing, April 1988. Prenatal Marijuana Exposure and Neonatal Outcomes in Jamaica: An Ethnographic Study, by Melanie C. Dreher Ph.D., et al. The studies finding harm are faulty in several respects, including only pre-legalization data, and the corruption of the pharmaceutical companies skew data routinely in their anti-competitive crusade against cannabis and herbal medicine.
However, despite thousands of years of experience and dozens of positive studies we have an unwarranted warning label mandated on our commercial cannabis products and mothers continue to be harassed by hospital staff and Child Protective Services for cannabis use during pregnancy.
It is obvious that we do not want our pregnant mother taking pharmaceuticals during pregnancy if at all possible. Across the board, pharmaceuticals are what we need to be afraid of, not cannabis. If the pharmaceuticals were not legally required to repeat those long lists of dangerous side effects in their TV commercials they would not be listing them. This multi-trillion dollar industry of pharmaceuticals is by far the biggest, most powerful group of lobbyists.
That is what cannabis has been up against for the last 100 years as cannabis has suffered the most adverse of all commercial playing fields, prohibition, which anti-trust juggernaut persists today against defenseless mothers, -BigPharma should be ashamed of themselves; Also Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) and every Michigan hospital, -they should be ashamed of themselves; A new billboard on M 43 proclaiming "IT'S NOT HAZY. POT AFFECTS BABIES" with a picture of a mom holding a cuddly infant, thedirtonpot.com. The website is the creation of the Van/Cass District Health Department, the Berrian County Health Department and Van Buren County Mental Health, -they should be ashamed of themselves; to you I demand:
Leave our mothers alone.
Stop opening CPS cases against mothers just because they chose an herbal medicine, cannabis, instead of a dangerous pharmaceutical.
Go sell your pills to somebody else.
Thomas Lavigne