News.com.au: July 18, 2012

After conducting a study on over 3000 pregnant women in Adelaide and New Zealand, it was found that maternal cannabis use; even before pregnancy can “double the risk” of giving birth prematurely. The lead author of the study said that using cannabis “raised the risk of preterm birth from the average of 7 or 8 per cent, to between 15 and 20 per cent.” The authors did emphasise however that they were “unable to determine whether this association is due to a toxic effect of [cannabis] or is a marker of a suite of lifestyle factors that contribute to the risk.”