00:00A lot of this is about how we read medical studies, so it gives us an insight into medical
00:06headlines and so on and scares.
00:09So the two studies that were good news were really well-conducted studies in the United
00:13States following large numbers of women, over 100,000 women and their offspring, and measuring
00:19cannabis levels in their urine.
00:21And this is the issue of when you're of childbearing age, you might be pregnant without knowing
00:29it in the first few weeks, and you might take a drug, you might take alcohol, you might
00:32take tobacco, or you might take cannabis.
00:35And the question is, some people have raised, does this affect the development of your child?
00:41So they looked at two outcomes following these children through large numbers, and looking
00:45at autism spectrum disorder in babies of mothers who'd had cannabis early in pregnancy, and
00:53developmental delay.
00:55And comfortingly, didn't show either problem.
00:58So we're not encouraging the use of cannabis during pregnancy, but if you happen to use
01:03it in early pregnancy without knowing that you're pregnant, it doesn't look as though
01:07that's going to be a disaster for your baby at all.
01:09So that's good news, and a well-conducted study.
01:13The other two studies, one was a use of cannabis in adolescents and young people to see whether
01:17it affects their academic achievement.
01:20So there have been some studies which suggested that if you use cannabis, cannabis actually
01:24reduces your motivation, and you don't do well at school, and you drop out of university,
01:29and what have you.
01:31So this study brought together all the research in this area to see what the sum total of
01:35knowledge was.
01:37And at first sight, it looked as though cannabis use, and the higher the cannabis use, the
01:42more likely was the young person to drop out of school, absenteeism, dropping out of university,
01:48not achieving the results that they were expected to.
01:51However, when you correct it for the person themselves, it turns out that the young person
02:00who's using a lot of cannabis is not the same as other kids.
02:03They've got more issues, more mental health issues, more problems in life, and that that
02:08could well be the cause of their poor academic achievement.
02:12And as a sidebar, they're using more cannabis, perhaps to, they think, treat or help ameliorate
02:18their mental health issue, which it doesn't do.
02:21So the cannabis is just a bystander in this, and the problem here is that if you focus
02:25on the cannabis use, you're missing the child or the young person who needs help.
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