Ganja Mama

Dr. Melanie Dreher, who is an experienced and accredited scientist has studied the effects on children whose mothers smoked ganja while pregnant.

"American drug use often takes place without cultural rules and in an unsupervised context. The Jamaican women we studied had been educated in a cultural tradition of using marijuana as a medicine. They prepared it with teas, milk and spices, and thought of it as a preventive and curative substance. Smoking it during pregnancy was a way of relieving nausea, increasing appetites, combatting fatigue and depression, providing rest and relaxation. Some of these women were in dire socioeconomic straits, and they found that smoking ganja helped allay feelings of worry and depression about their financial situation.

Our testing showed that the children of women who used ganja had better alertness, stability and adjustment than children of women who didn't use ganja. This was measured at the age of one month. We measured children again at four years and at five years of age, and found that there were no apparent deficits in the children of marijuana-using mothers. In fact, in many ways, they were better off than children of non-smoking mothers. The ganja-using mothers also seemed better off than non-users."

click on the title above to read the full interview by cannabis culture.