In our 2015 general election manifesto (pp.7,8) we covered the issue of Foetal Alcohol Syndrome. FAS is the leading known cause of intellectual disability in the Western world. Women knowingly risk harming their unborn children, and face no legal consequences.
Much is known about the impact on foetuses of women smoking during pregnancy – the Wiki page is here – and now we turn to cannabis, and an International Business Times piece – here. Cannabis is the drug most commonly found in the umbilical cords of foetuses which don’t survive.
Justice for Men & Boys 
That Cannabis is the most common drug found in umbilical cords of foetuses which don’t survive means absolutely nothing without knowing the relative proportion of foetuses which do survive that have cannabis in their umbilical cords. This may simply reflect the relative numbers consuming different drugs and the time following use when the can be detected. Was Alchol use tested or compared to cannabis use? Even if the cannabis usage rate is higher in the group that don’t survive it is not evidence that it is associated with increased risk unless other factors are controlled for. Two obvious factors are that mothers with severe morning sickness may self medicate and whether severe morning sickness is a risk factor, and mothers with poor living conditions, diet etc may be more likely to use cannabis. Clearly sensible advice is not to take any unnecessary drugs when pregnant but that is a long way from saying that cannabis is a problem for unborn infants let alone a significant one. The reported rate of cannabis use amongest expectant mothers was low so this cannot be a major issue at the moment, unless there is a significant difference in the rates found in umbilical cords between those that survive and those that do not I would not even think it justified further research.
We rightly criticise the feminist establishment for misusing statistics, focussing, for example, on murders of women and ignoring those of men. We should not make similar mistakes.
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Cannabis use is a known and undisputed risk factor. It is also easy to quantify since it is a physical risk factor and therefore measurable, rather than the decidedly nebulous and slippery character of social & economic risk factors.
Ask any consultant in Obs & Gynae. Alternatively, look to the literature, I would be happy to send you a pdf of the BJOG article if you cannot access it. Godders.
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Having read the paper that Mike linked to I am happy that there is evidence that cannabis is a risk factor. My argument was not in any case that ithe was not but a general annoyance with faulty arguments based on statistics. That the most common drug found in preterm umbilical cords by itself means nothing. Some drug had to be highest.
The paper compared incidences with and without cannabis use and performed a multivariate analysis with obvious confounding variables.
Social and economic factors have to be taken into account to give confidence in the association being causal in nature but this paper at least did that.
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Thanks Alan. I take your point – MRAs need to be squeaky clean in their assertions, unlike feminists.
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I do of course see where you were going with the relevant & helpful critique you advanced earlier. Furthermore, I fully agree that one must be careful to draw only valid inference from statistics. It is notable that advocates for male equality tend to understand and to respect mathematics. By contrast, feminists do not.
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An epidemiological study, published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology back in 2014, shows in unequivocal terms that cannabis use MORE THAN DOUBLES the incidence of spontaneous preterm births. This study had a sufficiently large cohort (n = 13545) to yield a statistically significant result and also carefully controlled for aggravating factors, such as tobacco use. Data was collected in France in 2010. Note that Cannabis use has risen exponentially during the last decade. Citation as follows:
Saurel-Cubizolles M-J, Prunet C, Blondel B. Cannabis use during pregnancy in France in 2010. BJOG 2014;121:971–977
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My take on this topic is to liken drugs (for non medical use) to ‘borrowing against the future’.
Whether they are used or not is up to the individual, however like any other form of borrowing there will come a ‘payback time’.
And like any other form of borrowing the payback will attract interest.
That is to say the payback will exceed the intially borrowed amount, sometimes by a lot.
Thus if one decides to borrow at all, amounts are best kept smallish, and infrequent – otherwise one is inviting trouble in.
I don’t demand that anyone agree with this POV, but I do have a little knowlege of that which I speak…
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