The Farm Mom Survey
The results from the Farm Mom Survey were shared at the Tenth National Clinical Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics in Baltimore last weekend in front of hundreds of attendees — attendees that included internationally known research scientists, cannabis clinicians, business people in the industry, and patients with experience with the medicine. The Farm Moms were all stars for a while and the excitement about The Farm and what we have to offer through our experiences and our history was palpable.
My task was to present information about the use of cannabis in pregnancy — is it safe? Is it dangerous? What does the current research say?
In preparing for the talk, I found studies that are often quoted, passed around, and held up at public health meetings — studies that say cannabis is the cause of long-term problems if used during pregnancy. Accepted as facts: Babies are born too early, too small, and are more likely to be admitted to neonatal intensive care units. Their brains are mis-wired. They have difficulty with memory, with clear thinking, and do poorly in academic achievement tests when they are teenagers. They are more likely to manifest significant mental illnesses and addiction disorders. All of these conclusions are accepted as fact by a large segment of society, but I had a hard time believing them — partly because of our shared history, and partly because of my professional observations as a family physician for the last 25 years. But I did not want to be blinded by my own cultural bias, so I read the studies, dissected them, looked for strengths and weaknesses in the design and for variables/mediators that could account for their findings. I found many. And for good measure, I surveyed the Farm Moms.
I know everyone is interested in what the survey showed. I have to be clear — this was a survey, not a scientific study. As you may have noticed when you took the survey, many of the questions asked for a comment answer, not a check-box answer — so those answers are not statistically easy to report. But I have combed through all those comments and tabulated some useful information.
First, the stats:
71 responses were included in my report. (The actual total number of responses was 73, but two of those came too late to be included in my data) The average age of respondents was 66 years. Those 71 women reported on a total of 178 children who were born back in those days. (Interesting that we were kind of normal, with 2.5 children, on average, apiece.) The average length of time lived in The Farm culture was 12 years. 2nd Gen birth years spanned from 1971 to 1991 and I included that data in my talk since it represents a time when cannabis was of a very different THC strength than it is today. 54% of our kids were male, 46% were female with a ratio of 1.20. This is slightly higher shifted towards boys compared to the USA average of ~1.07.
11% did not use cannabis. 89% did use cannabis. Interesting, in the comments, were some women who really didn’t like it that much but used it because sharing a joint was a whole lot easier than working it out and trying to explain why they didn’t want to. We did not yet know or respect that cannabis is a medicine that affects individuals very differently.
Here’s a graph showing frequency of use, some commenting that they were limited by supply, and five women abstaining from answering the question at all:
Of surprise interest to me, and of great interest to the conference attendees, was the use of cannabis during labor and delivery. After all, that is a practice not usually available to women today, but as I said to the crowd, “We were in the woods, and some of the midwives were smoking it!”
The breakdown was right down the middle with half of us finding benefit in cannabis during deliveries. Most comments were positive, but at least one person said that although she did smoke it, it stalled her labor, and only after the effects wore off did she get going again. Yet another indication that this herbal medicine has effects that are very individual.
Next I teased out significant mental illnesses and addiction disorders. 27% of women reported a family history of diagnosed-and-reported bipolar, schizophrenia & suicides. There are quite a few researchers claiming that individuals exposed to cannabis while in utero are more prone to all of these problems, especially if there is a family history of mental health problems. I was able to find some good studies that disprove this observation, but at this point in the research, one can have a Battle of Studies endlessly, trying to prove what you believe to be true. That is why the Farm Mom answers to this particular part of the survey were so important — studies are one thing, how the kids turned out in real life is another. Granted, we had other influences: our diet, our lifestyle, our self-selected society, our questionable memory of family histories, and early use of cannabis by our kids — some as young as 7 years old. But taking what the survey gave me, I was able to report the following:
(Yes, that’s a block of salt on the second slide because the 8.1% includes cannabis as a drug of abuse as considered by a government agency.)
The questions about the Grass Fast did not yield any clear results. I had wondered if we could use that time as a ‘control’ since babies gestating during the fast were not exposed, but the information was too vague to provide any clarity.
Comments about the use of cannabis during pregnancy at the end of the survey varied from “I wouldn’t use it now,” to “Cannabis is the greatest, best, most wonderful ally ever and my kids are super-stars because of it!” (Paraphrased, of course)
The best part of being able to share all your information was showing some of what our 2nd Gens are doing now — are they truly contributing members of society? Are they having difficulty with cognitive thinking? Are they problem citizens? Kind of a bottom-line observation: What are they doing now?
For this I made two slides that each had an animated scroll of a list of current professions being held by our 2nd Gens. I do not mean to ignore our kids that did, and do, face problems with mental health and addiction, but I wanted to show that for the most part, our kids are doing well. And again, I don’t want to ignore the other factors at play here: our diet, our personalities that led us to The Farm in the first place, use of other substances, our lifestyle and individual family histories. But the list of professions is pretty darn impressive, so I share it here for you. You may recognize a few, but I urge you to allow confidentiality for all of us, even if you do recognize a certain individual in this list.
I ended my talk with the obvious fact that is true, no matter who you are or what your bias might be: more research is needed. Cannabis may actually enhance brain development, or it may be causing problematic changes that we do not yet know how to observe. There are concerns that must be acknowledged: it’s still illegal, child protective services can be a threat, other children can be exposed and adversely affected, the THC content isn’t what it used to be, and contaminants in the cannabis can be harmful. Cannabis is NOT for everyone! But if it helps with nausea, with stress and anxiety, and if it helps a mother be a better mother to her children, then appropriate use does not seem to be causing any significant harm. Used as medicine, its benefits appear to outweigh possible harm.
That’s the summary of our survey, and I thank you all for helping me share a bit of our story with people who appreciate what we did and what we have to offer all these years later.
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