I Found My 16 Year Old Kid With Pot Again

Researchers have found marijuana metabolites in the urine of babies who were exposed to adult marijuana apply. deux/Corbis/Getty Images hide caption

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Researchers accept found marijuana metabolites in the urine of babies who were exposed to developed marijuana use.

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With more states legalizing recreational marijuana, parents are facing the question of whether they should fume pot effectually their children.

"I have never smoked and would never smoke around my child," says one female parent who lives in San Francisco. California is 1 of eight states that allows recreational marijuana apply for adults 21 and older.

This woman uses marijuana to treat her migraines and indisposition, but she never uses it around her 5-yr-onetime son. (She asked that her name not be used because marijuana apply remains a federal offense.) "I don't want to impact his air quality past the decisions I'm making," she says.

This is the correct decision, according to inquiry by Dr. Karen Wilson, a pediatrician and lead author of a report showing that children absorb chemicals from secondhand marijuana fume.

"This is the first time we've been able to demonstrate that there are detectable marijuana metabolites in the urine of children who've been exposed to marijuana," says Wilson, who is the Debra and Leon Blackness sectionalization chief of general pediatrics at Mount Sinai in New York.

Information technology's a small study, involving 43 young children in Colorado, some other state where recreational marijuana use is legal. The children, ages 1 calendar month to ii years, were hospitalized for bronchiolitis. Their urine samples were sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which used a new and highly sensitive examination that tin detect very depression levels of marijuana metabolites. They found 16 per centum of the overall samples tested positive. And for the children whose caregivers said they had been exposed to marijuana use, 75 percent had traces of marijuana in their urine.

"There is a strong clan between those who said in that location was someone in the home who used marijuana or a caretaker who used marijuana and the kid having detectable marijuana levels," says Wilson.

There is very trivial scientific bear witness to prove the health risks of secondhand marijuana smoke or vapor, but there are clues that it could crusade problems.

Some studies have shown that even depression concentrations of THC — the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana — can cause developmental problems for babies whose mothers used marijuana while significant. Other research shows that marijuana use in boyhood can bear upon the developing teenage brain and cause problems with attention, motivation and memory.

"Our hypothesis is that it is not skillful for kids," Wilson says. "We strongly believe that in one case we do the research to document secondhand marijuana exposure that we will encounter there is a negative issue on children."

And this worries doctors, especially in states where marijuana use is legal — more than one-half of states now have laws legalizing medical marijuana. Dr. David Beuther, a pulmonologist and associate professor of medicine at National Jewish Health in Denver, says his patients frequently ask about the safety of marijuana smoke, and their perception tends to be that it is safer than cigarette smoke. Beuther says they are wrong.

"There is no reason to believe that it is any safer than tobacco smoke exposure," he says, pointing to studies showing marijuana smoke in rats is simply as bad as tobacco smoke or even worse. Beuther suspects that secondhand marijuana smoke or vapor will put children at risk for bug like increased take a chance of viral infections, asthma and other respiratory illnesses. Information technology could even increase the risk of developing chronic conditions like heart disease and stroke later on in life, he speculates.

"To a degree nosotros suffer from lack of evidence," Beuther says. "But without the federal OK information technology'south difficult to study it." As marijuana is nonetheless illegal nether federal law, it makes it very difficult for laboratories to get permission to bear randomized clinical trials with information technology.

So until at that place is more science on the health risks, Beuther says, marijuana smokers and vapers should take the same precautions around children as tobacco smokers.

"Get it out of the business firm and abroad from your baby," Beuther says. "Not in the car, not in the abode. If someone wants to smoke marijuana, they demand to do it outside, far away from your baby or your child, because at this point we believe the agin health effects are probably as bad as secondhand cigarette fume."

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Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/12/19/505726846/doctors-say-parenting-and-pot-smoking-dont-mix