Cannabis During Pregnancy

Dr. Raphael Mechoulam – Cannabis During Pregnancy

Raphael Mechoulam (Hebrew: רפאל משולם‎) (born 1930) is an Israeli organic chemist and professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. Mechoulam is best known for his work (together with Y. Gaoni) in the isolation, structure elucidation and total synthesis of Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol, the main active principle of cannabis and for the isolation and the identification of the endogenous cannabinoids anandamide from the brain and 2-arachidonoyl glycerol (2-AG) from peripheral organs together with his students, postdocs and collaborators.

Transcript: Like every drug, one has to know as many details as possible. Can this drug be used in every case, can it be used in pregnant women. Normally I would suggest no drugs in pregnant women if possible. I mean as a male, I can easily say that. Let them suffer. But the fact of life is that we do not know the long term effects, the effects which can appear may years later, not acute effects, many years later. This has happened before in some hormone type drugs. The mother got the drug, and then the children had some problems. So I would strongly suggest that we should know more about the use of cannabis during pregnancy, but at the moment, no, most definitely, cannabis like any other drug, should not be used during pregnancy.