Did cannabis damage the Edlington child sadists in utero?

Naomi Muse

A goodly message, Melanie.

However, as these two boys seem to have also been subject to abuse and extremely poor role models the possibility of foetal damage through exposure to the canabis makes it difficult to see how these boys can be corrected and become reliable members of society.

By all accounts they are sociopathic in their behaviour and blame boredom, which at 11 and 12 is difficult to change.

Frank P

OMG Melanie; what a start to the week! Wanna borrow my old tin hat?

Go gal! I'll ride shotgun!

Shades of 2003 on you're erstwhile blog, I fear. The tinfoil hats are glinting on the horizon. I'm sure that's Pot Head I see through my telescope - right there, see! At the spearhead. Brace yourself babe, here they come!

Lord Monkington-Smythe

Or perhaps it is just that people who smoke illegal drugs in front of their children are more likely to be bad parents in the first place?

It is a stretch to blame this awful incident on cannabis... this article reminds me of those ludicrous US government "Reefer Terror!" information films from the 1950s.

Smoking/absorbing cannabis was the least of these childrens worries it seems. The fact that they both witnessed regular, real-life, unrestrained violence (I believe the father threatened to disfigure their mother's face with a knife in front of them) probably had more to do with their depraved behaviour.

Bad Scientist

One wonders how many children of parents who smoked 6 or more joints a week grew up not to be sadists, of course. Controls are such tricky things. One also wonders how large the original study was, where it was published, and what statistical methods were employed.

steve

Fetal alcohol syndrome in children is a major problem but, of course, alcohol is a legal drug that people abuse.

sleeping dolls

Re Peter Fried: The same study found that "results were not as strong (in those whose mothers smoked cannabis)as for those children whose mothers smoked (tobacco) cigarettes." And I don't think you'll find Goldschmidt claiming "the relationship between marijuana smoking in pregnancy and delinquency (is) established."

Still, if the climate change lobby can sex up it's annoyingly ambiguous evidence, (not to mention the British government) why shouldn't you?

C. Gee

Lord Monkington-Smythe:

Well, then, how about the state regulating who may become and remain parents? Qualification, licensing and bonding requirements; strict inspections; forfeiture of license, fines, forced abortion, sterilization, confiscation of children, for infraction.

This would, in any case, tie in nicely with the one-or-none child policy now being recommended by the Earth-keepers.

The strong arm of the law is being replaced by tentacles of regulation, reaching far and gripping tight. We can all go to hell in a fire-retardant hand-basket.

London Calling

Did cannabis damage the Edlington child sadists in utero?

I disagree that Cannabis contributed to the Edlington case. The evidence points to a Toxic home life and a systematic failure by social services and the police to act, rather than the use of Cannabis.

“From the age of nine the older brother smoked cannabis and drank cider and the family home saw "routine aggression, violence and chaos".

Alcohol and cannabis abuse by teenagers has become more widespread and at an alarming rate in recent years and evidently younger children are exposed, however this is more likely to increase anti social behaviour than acts of evil, based on the environment and peer pressure through gang related association.

James Bulgers Killers were not exposed to cannabis, they did however come from a toxic home life. These cases are rare, the causes however are not.

Myths and Facts About Marijuana
Myth: Marijuana Causes Crime. Marijuana users commit more property offenses than nonusers. Under the influence of marijuana, people become irrational, aggressive, and violent.

Fact: Every serious scholar and government commission examining the relationship between marijuana use and crime has reached the same conclusion: marijuana does not cause crime. The vast majority of marijuana users do not commit crimes other than the crime of possessing marijuana. Among marijuana users who do commit crimes, marijuana plays no causal role. Almost all human and animal studies show that marijuana decreases rather than increases aggression.

Degenhardt, Louisa, Wayne Hall and Michael Lynskey. “Testing hypotheses about the relationship between cannabis use and psychosis,” Drug and Alcohol Dependence 71 (2003): 42-4.

Myth: Marijuana Use During Pregnancy Damages the Fetus. Prenatal marijuana exposure causes birth defects in babies, and, as they grow older, developmental problems. The health and well being of the next generation is threatened by marijuana use by pregnant women.

Fact: Studies of newborns, infants, and children show no consistent physical, developmental, or cognitive deficits related to prenatal marijuana exposure. Marijuana had no reliable impact on birth size, length of gestation, neurological development, or the occurrence of physical abnormalities. The administration of hundreds of tests to older children has revealed only minor differences between offspring of marijuana users and nonusers, and some are positive rather than negative. Two unconfirmed case-control studies identified prenatal marijuana exposure as one of many factors statistically associated with childhood cancer. Given other available evidence, it is highly unlikely that marijuana causes cancer in children.
Parents Resource Institute for Drug Education.

Marijuana – Effects on the Female. Atlanta, GA: PRIDE, 1996.

http://www.drugpolicy.org/marijuana/factsmyths/

Hannah

As usual, Ms Phillips' remarks are ripped out of context.

These were childhoods characterised by alcohol, drugs, porn and violence.

I doubt any one incident affected these two criminal boys but, for heaven's sake, what a recipe for disaster.

If someone is vulnerable, cannabis can only ever push them closer to the edge. It certainly won't do anything good for them.

Anne Wotana 1

Pleeeeze, I expect better from you, Mel. What about all that beer, cocktails, wine, beef burgers, chicken nuggets, fizzy drinks, crisps, and heaven help us, chocolate cream eggs and sweetie bars.

Isaac Bickerstaff

...is there not at least one step missing in this argument? Cannabis possibly turns some children into delinquents, but not all. So why no effect on some, some turned into delinquents, and precisely two into sadistic psychopaths? There must be at least one other cause not mentioned.

blue_&_white_avenger

A point to Naomi Muse regarding "makes it difficult to see how these boys can be corrected and become reliable members of society."
Is it such an important factor that these scum need correcting to rejoin society?
Haven't they totally proved their inability to be part of society?
More to the point, why should there EVER be a risk to society from them - however small the "experts" adjudge it.
There is a small island off Scotland far out into the Atlantic. Without wishing to put the sea-birds at risk, I think scum like this should be abandoned there, permanently.

John.

London Calling: Studies have proved however that long-term smoking of marijuana does cause schizophrenia in some, but, not all such smokers.

Donald Collin

It is a fact that, apart from one or two Medical Scientists, most of the profession would, I believe, agree that cannabis is a highly dangerous drug if taken during pregnancy. Sentences for growing, using, dealing in or carrying the drug, should be of sufficent deterent (here I suggest a ten-year sentence minumum) to persuade people not to use use it. For heroin the sentence should be a minimum of twenty years. For murder, the death sentence must be place back onto the statute book for those murderers over eighteen years of age! And while I'm on this soap-box, people should be able to deal with any burgler in anyway they deem fit. If the burgler dies he/she will have no-one to blame but themselves. Anyone coming into my home wanting to commit burglery will be shown no mercy whatsoever.

Baron

Bad Scientists: the point is surely whether mothers who smoke cannabis are more likely to damage in utero than those who don’t.

Kevyn Bodman

One of your less good posts,Melanie.
The questions with which you close the final paragraph,which you know cannot be answered with accuracy,are put in as an appeal to irrationality.

Please deal with the points raised by Bad Scientist at 5.33pm and sleeping dolls at 5.59pm.

Your post is effective as an emotive scream ,it is not effective as reasonable analysis or as science.

Miranda Rose Smith

Dear Ms. Phillips: Keep up the fight against marijuana. It wrecked the life of someone very near and dear to me.

D. Bailey

I see you have also failed to acknowledge other surveys that suggest the opposite is the case. A landmark study in the 1990s concluded that, among the offspring of Jamaican marijuana users, "there were no signs of birth defects or of behavioral problems in the marijuana-exposed children either during the month after birth or even several years after". In fact, some babies even showed improved mental performance over the babies of non-smokers which falls in line with other studies that highlight learning gains in light cannabis users.

Any causal link between cannabis use and mental illness, either prenatal or postnatal, remains impossible to prove and quite frankly there are far more influential things in people's upbringings that may lead to sadism. As a cannabis user myself I find it absurd that people insist on writing about how awfully dangerous it is, when anyone who is acquainted with the science will know that whilst not harmless, it is the least harmful and least addictive psychoactive drug known to man.

Let it be legalised...

Neil Craig

Googling Peter Fried he seems to put the alleged damage by mothers smoking cigarettes ahead of that of cannabios. The problem with all such studies, unless carried out with a very large population & tight controls, is that there are likely to be other factors - eg if mothers smoking cannabis in preganancy were to be likely to be poorer or to be poorer at mothering later, let alone users of other drugs. this would skew the statistics. For that reason a small observed increase is not normally considered statistically valid, except when it is politically useful to say it is.

This political usefulness applies to the alleged evidence against passive smoking& for things like leukemia clusters near nuclear plants (the very strong evidence that low levels of radiation are beneficial are politically incorrect & thus unmentioned.

Statistics is, at least for small numbers, an imprecise science & I suspect that if a similar correlation was found between horse riding & adult chinlessness it would be put down to other factors.

Jerry

There are other methods of determining the effect of cannabis or any other drugs on the human brain than the prospective double-blind method. There are now fMRI methods for determining differences. Our doubts about this drug do not have to be permanent.

David Raynes

This seems a fairly sensible question Melanie has raised. Of course cannabis in the womb, may not have been a contributory factor nad there werte plainly many other factors. Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) is better understood and documented but the strong posibility that other psychoactive drugs cross the placenta and influence the unborn, should, rationally, to be taken more seriously. It is interesting that some here, have argued against the very idea and attempted to shoot the messenger.

Margaret Muller-Johansson

Drugs are bad and people should know by this time, parents should explain to their children not to be near them or someone who is using it, marijuana and all have a side effects and some of those side effects are laziness, hallucination, paranoia, and mental illness I don't have to be scientist to know this, women who is pregnant should not smoke or be close to someone else who is smoking marijuana it is not right, but in Britain people smoke a day light in the parks where little children are playing, or they smoke near schools this kind of behavior should be illegal and shouldn't happen at all

Neil

Can you cite the studies please ? Then we can read, rather than your take on the ..

Jack

Let those who abuse drugs kid themselves that it's harmful. Let them hide behind their drug induced haze unable to face the real world. In the real world we know the danger they cause and the heartache they bring.

Steve Rolles

I posted this yesterday lunchtime but it doesn't seem to have appeared, so im going to give it another go hopeful that it was a technical rather than editorial problem:

Melanie - you are simply incorrect to claim the ACMD have ignored the issue of drug damage to unborn children, or the wider issue regarding harms of (drug using parents on children. In 2003 they published a detailed 90 page report titled 'Hidden Harm - responding to the needs of children of problem drug users', that specifically addressed these issues (It is available online here on the ACMD website here: http://bit.ly/cQCDvw). The report involved an array of collaborators and expertise including the Children's Society, the NSPCC, and Barnardos amongst many others. It includes a chapter on the potential harms on unborn babies of a range of drugs including cannabis. To quote from this section:

"Smoking cannabis during
pregnancy is associated with lower birth weight and with
subtle changes in the child’s neurological and psychological
performance that may persist into later life"

The report even cites the Goldschmidt et al 2002 paper mentioned by Mary Brett.

The ACMD then established a working group to promote the report and see its findings were adopted by Drug action Teams across the country and did a follow up report in 2006 to see to what extent the reports recommendations had been adopted and implemented by Government. Both Nutt and Iversen sat on the committee during this period and endorsed the Hidden Harm reports findings - to which they doubtless contributed. I'm not sure what more you could really ask for from the council, but maybe you should retract the 'ignored' and grossly irresponsible' comments.

Re The Home Affairs Select Committee drugs inquiry of 2001 - they did not consider drug harms on unborn babies specifically but did note that:

"Drugs can cause damage to the health of not only those individuals who use them, but also to the health of their family and friends and of the wider community in which they live. ADFAM, a charity which represents and supports families affected by drug use, told us of "a clear and damaging link between poor physical and mental health and the presence of disruptive drug use in families"."

(see here: http://bit.ly/aDpl79 )

Finally it seems a little harsh, indeed premature, to similarly condemn the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs - since it has only been in existence for a couple of weeks and has yet to publish anything.

M. D.

"How many unborn babiesâ™ brains have been profoundly damaged in utero by this grossly irresponsible attitude? And how many of those babies have grown into delinquent children?"
And might not one of them grow up to be the 21st century's Einstein?

Confounding variables.