research into MJ use among Jamaican women and infants

[Sequoiacrone]

Ganja in Jamaica

Article

Thursday, July 31, 2008 - 4:30 PM http://www.rism.org/isg/dlp/ganja/graphics/intro9.gif (http://www.rism.org/isg/dlp/ganja/introduction/index.html)

http://www.rism.org/graphics/grayline Doctor Melanie Dreher - Reefer Researcher - NOV/DEC 98 - CANNABIS CULTURE 55 Doctor Melanie Dreher - Reefer Researcher
Despite political pressure to have it otherwise, Dr. Dreher's research reveals that pot-smoking moms can have smart, healthy babies.
By PETE BRADY

Dr. Melanie Dreher is one of a handful of scientists who have researched marijuana objectively and intelligently in the last three decades.
Dr. Dreher is Dean of the University of Iowa's College of Nursing, and also holds the post of Associate Director for the University's Department of Nursing and Patient Services. She's a perpetual overachiever who earned honours degrees in nursing, anthropology and philosophy before being awarded a PhD in anthropology from prestigious Columbia University in 1977.
Although Dreher is a multi-faceted researcher and teacher whose expertise ranges from culture to child development to public health, she began early on to specialize in medical anthropology. After distinguishing herself as a field researcher in graduate school, Dreher was hand-picked by her professors to conduct a major study of marijuana use in Jamaica. Her doctoral dissertation was published as a book titled "Working Men and Ganja," which stands as one of the premier cross-cultural studies of chronic marijuana use.
Along with being a widely-published researcher, writer, and college administrator, Dreher is a professor or lecturer at several institutions, including the University of the West Indies. She recently served as president of the 120,000 member Sigma Theta Tau International Nursing Honour Society, has been an expert witness in a religious freedom case involving ganja use by the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church, and is one of the most well-respected academicians in the world.
Governmental and private organizations, including the US State Department, have funded Dreher's many research projects, some of which focused on ganja's role in Jamaican culture, and the effects of ganja and cocaine on Jamaican women and children.
Dreher has impeccable credentials and a wealth of proprietary information on ganja use, but when she released solidly-researched reports showing that children of ganja-using mothers were better adjusted than children born to mothers who did not use ganja, she encountered political and professional turbulence. Some observers accuse the government and anti-pot groups of working to suppress her findings, but Dreher continues to speak openly about her

See the entire article:
http://www.rism.org/isg/dlp/ganja/analyses/DreherInterview.html


Part two of our look at Dr. Melanie Dreher's research into ganja use among Jamaican women.

by Pete Brady, with illustrations by Tom Arnatt
Cannabis Culture Magazine, 16:Jan/Feb 1999

to see part two:
http://www.rism.org/isg/dlp/ganja/analyses/GanjaBabyes.html

[Sequoiacrone]

<H4>April 22, 2006 - CounterPunch (US Web)

Dreher's Jamaican Pregnancy Study

More Suppression of Marijuana Research

By Fred Gardner


</H4>(The full Dreher Study itself can be found at www.druglibrary.org/SCHAFFER/hemp/medical/can-babies.htm (http://www.druglibrary.org/SCHAFFER/hemp/medical/can-babies.htm))
In the 1980s Melanie Dreher and colleagues at UMass Amherst began a longitudinal study to assess the well-being of infants and children whose mothers used cannabis during pregnancy. The researchers lived in rural Jamaican communities among the women they were studying. Thirty cannabis-using pregnant women were matched for age and socio-economic status with 30 non-users. Dreher et al compared the course of their pregnancies and their neo-natal outcomes, using various standard scales.
No differences were detected three days after birth. At 30 days the exposed babies did better than the non-exposed on all the scales and significantly better on two of the scales (having to do with autonomic stability and reflexes).
Follow-up studies were conducted when the kids were four and five (just before entering school and after). The moms were defined as light users (1-10 spliffs per week), moderate (11-20), and heavy (21-70). Consumption of ganja tea was also taken into account.
The children were measured at age four using three sets of criteria: the McCarthy scale, which measures verbal ability, perceptivity, quantitative skills, memory and motor; a "behavioral style" scale measuring temperament, based on a 72-item questionnaire filled out by the child's primary caregiver; and a "quality of housing" index to indicate socioeconomic status.
"No Differences at All."

When they controlled for the household ratings, Dreher recounted April 8 at the Patients Out of Time Conference in Santa Barbara, her team "found absolutely no differences" between the children whose mothers were non-users and the children from the three groups of users. "No differences at all."
When testing the children at age five, Dreher measured school attendance and introduced an additional measure, the "home scale," accounting for stimulation in the physical and language environment, and other inputs affecting development. " Low income Jamaican children do not have a lot of toys," Dreher noted, "but It is not unusual for a two-and-a-half year old to be washing out her father's handkerchiefs to learn some adult skills."
As with the age-four studies, no differences were found among the exposed and non-exposed groups. But analysis of the home scale revealed that "stimulation with toys, games, reading material" was significantly related to measures on the McCarthy scale -verbal, perceptual, memory, and general cognition- and to mood. There was also a relationship between basic school attendance and McCarthy-scale measurements.
"We can't conclude that there is necessarily no impact from prenatal ganja use but we can conclude that the child who attends basic school regularly, is provided with a variety of stimulating experiences at home, who is encouraged to show mature behavior, has a profoundly better chance of performing at a higher level on the skills measured by the McCarthy scale whether or not his or her mother used ganja during pregnancy," said Dreher

See the rest of this article:
http://www.november.org/stayinfo/breaking06/DreherStudy.html