Deyalsingh: Don’t mix pregnancy, cannabis

JUST as with basic drugs like aspirin and legal intoxicants, expectant mothers must exercise caution around marijuana, advised Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh.

He spoke in the House of Representatives on Wednesday on two bills to decriminalise cannabis/marijuana and regulate its handling.

Recalling having met TT citizens in their forties and fifties who as babies had been victims of the thalidomide crisis, he advised, “We have to tread lightly with marijuana. “I don’t want us in TT to have the equivalent of the thalidomide babies.”

Deyalsingh said just as a pregnant woman should not be given aspirin or ibuprofen, so too must prescribing doctors and pregnant women be careful over cannabis.

“This (legislation) is not a free-for-all to smoke cannabis while pregnant.”

Deyalsingh said globally some 2.5 per cent of women use cannabis in their pregnancy. He cautioned that their babies could face stillbirth, premature birth, smaller babies and behavioural problems.

Deyalsingh lamented that some pregnant women are drinking too much alcohol and smoking too many cigarettes.

Some 6.6 per cent of pregnant women smoke cigarettes in their first trimester (three months) of pregnancy. Three per cent use illicit drugs, while 4.7 per cent consume alcohol, an amount he said was “too much.”

Deyalsingh said the Government’s amendment to the Dangerous Drugs Act to decriminalise cannabis also outlaws dangerous psychedelic drugs such as MDMA (ecstasy or molly) and ketamine. He said the bill will outlaw drugs such as Fentanyl, plus the analogue drugs created to have a slightly different molecular structure by crooks seeking to evade a legal ban.

Otherwise Deyalsingh said the cannabis legislation was a very emotive and controversial topic.

“You can’t please everybody, because everybody has got a hardened policy view they can support.”

He said it was undoubted that medical marijuana is now in the medical mainstream, as he recalled a new strain, Charlotte’s Web, created for a child suffering seizures.