Regular use of marijuana by parents could make their children more susceptible to viral respiratory infections such as the common cold or bronchiolote.
- The impact of passive smoking on children is known: it can notably cause asthma or ear infections.
- For parents who smoke marijuana, the danger lurking in children seems to be more susceptibility to the viruses that cause colds and bronchiolitis
Colorado children whose parents regularly smoke marijuana, which is legal there for both recreational and medicinal use, do not suffer from the classic ailments associated with passive smoking, asthma, or ear infections, in particular. On the other hand, they seem to be much more susceptible to viral respiratory infections such as the common cold. This is what shows a study carried out at the West Forest School of Medicine in the United States published in the journal Pediatric Research.
Research shows that parents who smoke or vape marijuana on a regular basis report that their children have suffered more viral respiratory infections compared to children whose parents did not smoke tobacco or marijuana.
Colds or bronchiolitis
Among the families who took part in the survey, more than 5% declared that they used marijuana regularly. Their characteristics: young parents, with a higher level of education and with above-average income. The results were based on responses from parents who had visited the pediatric emergency department at Children’s Hospital Colorado with a child under 12 years old between 2015 and 2017 and who reported their cleaning habits. use of marijuana and, at the same time, the frequency with which they had taken their children to consultation or emergency for asthma attacks, ear infections or respiratory infections of viral origin such as colds or bronchiolitis.
“The negative impact that passive exposure to tobacco smoke may have on children’s health has been widely studied, but the impact of children’s passive exposure to marijuana smoke is unclear. Our results identify a potential increase in respiratory infections related to this use, which may have important implications for health care as more US states move towards legalizing the recreational use of this substance. “, underlines Adam Johnson, author of this study.
But he stresses that this is only an observational study that does not allow to conclude a cause and effect relationship between the use of marijuana by parents and the frequency of respiratory infections in their children. On the one hand because the study panel is limited (less than 1,500 people) and on the other hand because the people questioned live in a state where the consumption of recreational marijuana is legal, which does not allow extend the conclusions to populations living in areas where this consumption is illegal.
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