There have been several important studies on the effects of cannabis recently. Some are reassuring. Others may not be when it comes to academic performance or brain function. Given one third of Australians have used cannabis at least once, and the medicinal cannabis market has been growing reasonably quickly – the safety of cannabis is a major public health issue.
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TVTranscript
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.