The risks with smoking while pregnant

Smoking is becoming less and less publicly acceptable.  I have severe smoke allergies and asthma so when I am behind a smoker on the street I usually stop and wait for about a minute until they are far enough away from me before I continue walking.  The number of times having to do this lately though has become less and less.   Another sign of the changing times is that smokers that stand right in front of entrances forcing nonsmokers to walk through a cloud of smoke to get inside are now considered a nuisance and are given dirty looks.  The number of smokers has gown down in the last 10 years reports Gallup.  Currently there is roughly 1 smoker in every 5 Americans. 

According to the CDC the number of pregnant women who smoke during pregnancy has also gone down.  So how many women smoke during pregnancy?  From the Center for Disease Control, approximately 10% of women reported smoking during the last 3 months of pregnancy. Of women who smoked 3 months before pregnancy, 55% quit during pregnancy. Among women who quit smoking during pregnancy, 40% relapsed within 6 months after delivery. 

This is good news but what about the women who relapsed or didn’t attempt to quit at all?  The 4000+ ingredients in cigarettes has been known to decrease fertility, increase risk of stillbirth or miscarriage, low birth weight,  increase risk of breathing problems for your child, placental abruption, and even birth defects. Below is a diagram that shows just a few of the ingredients that are inside that cigarette. 

Driving Stoned?

.08 is been drilled into anyone ever getting a license or even going to the DMV for that matter.  It is the legal limit of alcohol that is allowed in your blood stream to be able to drive legally.  Now with the legalization of marijuana becoming more and more popular law enforcement agencies are looking at how driving under the influence of marijuana will affect future and current laws. 

With the legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington there are more drivers on the road that are “impaired” from marijuana.  Besides the two states that allow recreational marijuana there are 24 states that allow it solely for medical purposes.  However, with the acceptance of marijuana being pushed to the front of the news there are speculations that recreational marijuana will soon be allowed in Alaska, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon and the District of Columbia.

There is not a lot of data on this topic and while some people say driving while high will negatively affect the driver’s ability to maneuver safely; others say that driving will high has no impact on the driver whatsoever.

“Colorado, Washington and Montana have set an intoxication threshold of 5 parts per billion of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in pot, in the blood. A few other states have set intoxication thresholds, but most have not set a specific level. In Washington, there was a jump of nearly 25 percent in drivers testing positive for marijuana in 2013 - the first full year after legalization - but no corresponding increase in car accidents or fatalities.

What worries highway safety experts are cases like that of New York teenager Joseph Beer, who in October 2012 smoked marijuana, climbed into a Subaru Impreza with four friends and drove more than 100 mph before losing control. The car crashed into trees with such force that the vehicle split in half, killing his friends.

Beer pleaded guilty to aggravated vehicular homicide and was sentenced this past week to 5 years to 15 years in prison.

A prosecutor blamed the crash on "speed and weed," but a Yale University Medical School expert on drug abuse who testified at the trial said studies of marijuana and crash risk are "highly inconclusive." Some studies show a two- or three-fold increase, while others show none, said Dr. Mehmet Sofuoglu. Some studies even showed less risk if someone was marijuana positive, he testified.” -- (Associated Press Quote)

SO WHAT’S NEXT?

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is conducting research to get a better idea of how pot affects driving. NHTSA and Washington state officials have also teamed up to assess change in marijuana use by drivers before and after the state allowed retail sale of the drug, with results due next year.

Should Doctors be Drug Tested?

The New York Times recently posted an article on drug testing doctors in the state of California.  It seems contradictory to test someone who has taken a pledge to help, serve, and heal the sick but the statistics of medical professionals who use and abuse drugs or alcohol is close to 18%.  Many point out that the doctors that put patients in extreme danger such as surgeons, obstetricians, anesthesiologists and other high-risk doctors should be randomly tested while general practitioners should be randomly tested just not as regularly.  Proposition 46—as it is known as comes from the large number of medical malpractices suits that are appearing in California every year. 

Daniel R. Levinson, the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services, said in an interview that there should be random drug testing across the medical profession, given the access in hospitals to controlled substances. “I don’t think that a carve-out when it comes to the medical field is sensible public policy,” he said. “No one should be above suspicion or below suspicion. I think we all need to play by similar rules.”

In California, major laws are routinely made at the ballot box, and initiatives like this can be as hard-fought as a race for governor. Both sides expect this contest to dwarf anything else on the ballot, including the lopsided race for governor (Jerry Brown, a popular Democrat, is widely expected to win re-election).

“From a national perspective, this is really historic,” said Jamie Court, the president of Consumer Watchdog, one of the groups supporting the initiative. “It will give the public a chance to put doctors in the same category as pilots and truck drivers and other workers who are tested for impairment because they have public-safety jobs. That will spread like wildfire if the voters of California give it a nod.”

Dr. Thorp of the California Medical Association said the issue was so important that the coalition opposing it was “very committed to ensuring that this ballot initiative doesn’t get passed.”

Consumer Watchguard, the lobbying group for this initiative even put together a YouTube campaign called “Pee in a Cup, TheMusical”.  The video ends with the statistic that 18% of medical professionals abuse alcohol or drugs. 

The new proposition will be voted on with the other ballots in November.  If passed, experts say that the drug testing of doctors will spread like wildfire to the rest of the union.   

Rio without a drug testing lab

Rio de Janeiro’s anti-doping lab was stripped of its accreditation by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) last year; Brazil is still without a certified drug testing laboratory two years out from the next Olympics, which it will host.  The lab lost its accreditation because of the large number of false positives and "repeated failures" test results that the lab found. Apparently, the lab had somewhat of a record for producing “false positives” – in 2012 it produced a positive test for testosterone on Brazilian beach volleyball player Pedro Solberg Salgado that was later shown to be false.

More recently, the lab saw its positive test on now-retired Chelsea soccer star Deco overturned when his sample was retested in Lausanne. Deco originally tested positive for hydrochlorothiazide, a masking agent for steroids, and tamoxifen, often used to lessen the side effects of steroids, but he was officially cleared of the charges after the Lausanne re-test.

Rio, Brazil is set to host the Summer Olympics in 2016 and is now without a drug testing facility to test the athletes with.  For this year’s World Cup that was hosted in Brazil there was no drug testing facility.  All of the samples had to be shipped to a lab in Lausanne, Switzerland according to Inside the Games.  The cost of shipping these samples were close to 250k.

According to CNN Money, the cost of hosting the Olympics is rising and making a profit is harder.  There is even the cautionary tale of Greece who spent close to 11 Billion Euros (double the amount the Government budgeted for) on the games and now the country and most of the EU is in financial distraught.  The cost of sending samples to Switzerland could be possibly double the cost the World Cup spent.  Spending a possible 500K on shipping drug testing samples isn’t feasible for Rio.   The anti-doping lab in Rio needs to get its accreditation back by the time 2016 rolls around.  Brazil is starring to rush but it is running out of time for the 2016 Olympics.  

This article is a summation of an article on Swimswam.com that can be found here. 

First Tennessee Woman Charged on Controversial New Drug Law

Time Magazine reported two days ago that 26-year-old Mallory Loyola was arrested on July 8th and charged with misdemeanor assault after she and her newborn baby tested positive for meth. Monroe County Sheriff Bill Bivens told a local news station in Knoxville, Tenn., that Loyola admitted to smoking meth days before the birth of her child. 

This controversial new law went into effect earlier this month.  The law allows mothers to be "prosecuted for assault for the illegal use of a narcotic drug while pregnant" if the child is harmed by, or becomes addicted to the drug in question. 

The new law punishes women who have a drug problem instead of helping them through it. Pregnancy is a hard time in a woman's life but making them feel like criminals will not help the drug problem in America.  

Jessica Valenti, a writer for The Guardian posted a response article to this new law about women being treated as potential criminals.  

"A world in which all women who can get pregnant are considered "pre-pregnant" – and in which the state has more of a vested interest in protecting any embryo or fetus at any stage of development than the woman herself – is the stuff of nightmares, and a frightening future that's already upon us.

But a pregnant woman is still a person under the law, with the right to make decisions – even poor ones – about her own body. Instead of living in some Margaret Atwood-style dystopian world where we regulate, monitor and punish vulnerable pregnant women, let's instead make sure that those who need help, get it – and not from inside a jail cell."

 What do you think about this new law? Do you think women should be prosecuted or helped if they have a drug problem while pregnant?