A leading academic in the field of foetal behaviour has claimed that pregnant women risk exposing their unborn children to health complications by consuming even small quantities of alcohol. Prof Peter Hepper, an expert in foetal behaviour, has said that while examining scans of babies of mothers who drank an average of a glass of wine per week, he found that foetuses had stopped breathing and moving for spells of up to two hours.
On this evening’s Right Hook, George will be talking to Dr Peter Boylan, of the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, to offer his take on the health implications of drinking alcohol during pregnancy. Tune in live today at 4.45pm or find the podcast later at http://www.newstalk.com/podcasts/The_Right_Hook/.
On November 6th, 2012, the US state of Colorado made global headlines by narrowly passing the 64th amendment to the constitution, allowing all citizens over the age of 21 to legally grow and consume cannabis – effectively regulating it in the same way as alcohol. And now the state government has taken steps to require all dispensaries to post warnings that, just like tobacco and alcohol, cannabis isn’t safe for foetuses.
The news comes following a number of reports from gynaecologists that pregnant women in the state are resorting to lighting up medical marijuana in order to treat the symptoms of morning sickness.
“The feeling was that pregnant women were almost being marketed to,” Republican politician Jack Tate said as he introduced a bill on the floor of the Colorado House of Representatives. “Sometimes the marketing is overt, likes Coors light is ‘wonderful and refreshing.’ Sometimes it’s informal, like the idea that nausea can be treated with marijuana.”
Marijuana laws in the US [Pew Research Center]
Public health officials in Colorado are backing the Republican’s bill, saying that while the clinical research on the effects of marijuana during pregnancy is scant, there is almost certainly no “safe” amount of THC, the mind-altering ingredient the naturally appears in the cannabis plant, that a pregnant women can consume. Instead, they claim that early exposure to THC has been linked in research to low IQ scores in children and problems with concentration later on in life.
The current bill, which is now making its way to the state Legislature, is somewhat weaker than one that was actually rejected by Colorado representatives in February. That bill would have banned cannabis dispensaries from recommending the drug to pregnant women. The new bill, which passed by 10 votes to three, forbids advertising to pregnant women and requires pot shops to post a warning leaflet on their walls.
The move has been criticised by the Colorado Cannabis Chamber of Commerce, saying that the scientific basis of the law is purely drawn from anecdotal evidence, and unfairly singles out marijuana and THC.
Pubs and shops in Colorado are not required to post warnings on their walls about the effects of alcohol consumption, said the Chamber’s president. These “burdensome laws” are designed merely to limit the growth of Colorado’s cannabis economy, he added.
