US Pregnant Women Increasingly Use Marijuana, Research Suggests

Rates of pot use among American pregnant women have increased dramatically from 2002 - 2014, a new research finds out. Researchers find out that marijuana use among pregnant women in the United States during past month has jumped to 62 percent. Most of these pregnant women said they use marijuana for treating their morning sickness, which most health experts are cautioning against.

Findings from a latest research published in The JAMA Network have shown that there has been an increased rate of pot use among American pregnant women and non-pregnant from 2002 - 2014. From 2002 up to 2014, the rate of pregnant women using marijuana in the America increased from 2.4 percent to 3.9 percent and for non-pregnant women the increased was 6.3 percent to 9.3 percent, the researchers found out.

The study also found out that 7.5 percent of pregnant aged between 18 and 25 admitted has pot used, while only 2.1 percent of pregnant women aged between 26 and 44 said they've done the same thing too. Health experts can't determine the real cause of the increase, however there's one leading theory that experts looked at, according to a post in Huffington Post, that is the growing acceptance of medical marijuana as a treatment for nausea might have encourage pregnant women to use cannabis to help them deal with morning sickness.

Dr. Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and her two colleagues said that "although the evidence for the effects of marijuana on human prenatal development is limited at this point, research does suggest that there is cause for concern," the Marshalltown has learned. However some studies have shown that babies whose moms have used marijuana during pregnancy might be anemic, low-birth weights and have other health issues needing intensive care.

For the research, the researchers examined over 200,000 American women ages between 18 and 44 who have finished the National Survey on Drug and Health from year 2002 up to 2014. The yearly drug survey includes questions regarding the drug use of the participants in the past month. Around 5 percent of the American women or roughly 10,500 were pregnant while being surveyed.