London, United Kingdom: Children exposed to cannabis in utero display no disruptions in either their cognitive or verbal development during their first three years of life, according to data published in the journal Early Human Development.
A team of international researchers assessed outcomes in a cohort of Danish children with and without prenatal exposure to either cannabis or tobacco.
Compared to children with no exposure, those with prenatal cannabis exposure “scored significantly higher” on the verbal assessments.
“Contrary to our pre-registered hypotheses, children with prenatal cannabis exposure had higher scores on the Bayley-III Language scale, and children with prenatal exposure to cannabis and tobacco had a greater age-related increase in language scores, compared with the other groups,” researchers determined.
The study’s authors concluded: “In short, we found no evidence that prenatal exposure to cannabis was associated with impaired cognitive or language development, and no evidence that the combination of cannabis and tobacco was associated with worse outcomes compared with either drug alone, in this sample. … This [finding] could help to reduce the stigma experienced by women who use cannabis during pregnancy and potentially lower the barrier for seeking help in this group.”
The findings are consistent with those of a study published last year in the journal Academic Pediatrics, which reported that those exposed to cannabis in utero are no more likely to suffer developmental delays as young children than are those with no prenatal exposure.
More recently, data published in the journal Alcohol: Clinical & Experimental Research determined that prenatal cannabis exposure is not associated with negative cognitive outcomes at adolescence.
Although some studies have associated prenatal cannabis exposure with low birth weight, longitudinal studies following in utero-exposed infants to adulthood have generally failed to identify “any long-term or long-lasting meaningful differences” in their neurodevelopment.
Full text of the study, “The association between prenatal exposure to cannabis with and without tobacco and early cognitive and language development in a sample of polysubstance-exposed children,” appears in Early Human Development. Additional information is available from the NORML Fact Sheet, ‘Maternal Cannabis Use and Childhood Outcomes.’