April, 2026
Children exposed to cannabis in utero display no disruptions in either their cognitive or verbal development during their first three years of life, according to data published in the journal Early Human Development. A team of international researchers assessed outcomes in a cohort of Danish children with and without prenatal exposure to either cannabis or tobacco.
Compared to children with no exposure, those with prenatal cannabis exposure “scored significantly higher” on the verbal assessments. “Contrary to our pre-registered hypotheses, children with prenatal cannabis exposure had higher scores on the Bayley-III Language scale, and children with prenatal exposure to cannabis and tobacco had a greater age-related increase in language scores, compared with the other groups”, researchers determined.
The study’s authors concluded: “In short, we found no evidence that prenatal exposure to cannabis was associated with impaired cognitive or language development, and no evidence that the combination of cannabis and tobacco was associated with worse outcomes compared with either ‘drug’ alone, in this sample. … This [finding] could help to reduce the stigma experienced by women who use cannabis during pregnancy...”.
Although some studies have associated prenatal cannabis exposure with low birth weight, longitudinal studies following in utero-exposed infants to adulthood have generally failed to identify “any long-term or long-lasting meaningful differences” in their neurodevelopment.
Social, Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre, King's College London, London; Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK; Department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics, Aalborg University Hospital, Aalborg, Denmark; Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
February, 2026
Infants exposed to cannabis in utero (before birth) are no more likely to require emergency department care or suffer from developmental delays than unexposed children, according to data published in the journal Academic Paediatrics. Investigators in North Carolina, United States, examined the relationship between in utero cannabis exposure and infants’ health care utilisation and developmental outcomes.
“Compared to those unexposed, … children who were exposed to cannabis in utero have similar WCC [well child care] attendance and ED [emergency department] use over the first 2 years and similar developmental outcomes at 3 years”, researchers reported.
The authors acknowledged that their results were consistent with those of other studies, finding no differences in ED visits or developmental delays among cannabis-exposed and cannabis-unexposed children. Although many studies have associated in utero cannabis exposure with low birth weight, longitudinal studies following in utero exposed infants to adulthood have generally failed to identify “any long-term or long lasting meaningful differences” in their neurodevelopment.
Department of Paediatrics (BJ Raffa, C Seashore, and S Schilling); The Cecil G. Sheps Centre for Health Services Research (BJ Raffa); Department of Social Work (P Lanier); Department of Biostatistics (Y Yang and F-C Lin), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
March, 2025
Prenatal cannabis use does not impede infants’ cognitive development, according to longitudinal data published in Maternal and Child Health Journal. Canadian investigators assessed the prevalence of prenatal cannabis use and its impact on early childhood development in a cohort of 1,489 mothers and infants.
Investigators reported no association between prenatal cannabis use and developmental indicators at age two, including fine motor skills and language development. However, researchers did not rule out the possibility of such changes developing later in life. “We found that cannabis use during pregnancy was not significantly associated with cognitive, fine motor, gross motor and language development of 2-year-old children” the study’s authors concluded.
École de psychologie de l’Université Laval; CHU de Québec-Université Laval Research Centre, Quebec City, QC; Université de Montréal; CHU Sainte-Justine Research Centre; Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, QC; University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB; Université de Sherbrooke; CHU de Sherbrooke Research Centre, Sherbrooke, QC; Canada
18 October, 2024
In the United States, two federal reports, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), may help allay at least some concerns around prenatal exposure to cannabis.
One study found that cannabis use during early pregnancy was not associated with child autism, while the other study found no association with increased risk for early childhood developmental delays.
The autism spectrum disorder (ASD) analysis included data from 178,948 pregnancies born to 146,296 unique individuals between 2011 and 2019, while the early development research used data from 119,976 pregnancies born to 106,240 individuals between early 2015 and late 2019. Children were screened at various points on autism and developmental measures.
Division of Research; Paediatric Subspecialties; Kaiser Permanente, California; Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, University of California, San Francisco, California, USA.
