photo courtesy Mothering.com

IS IT SAFE TO SMOKE MARIJUANA WHILE BREASTFEEDING?

We already know from extensive research and studies that marijuana consumption is very safe for full grown adults. (Safer than a wide range of foods, medicines, and substances currently on the market for legal trade and consumption.)

Is it also safe for breastfeeding babies for their mothers to smoke ganja? These are the important factors to consider:

First of all, what is the individuals level of impairment when smoking marijuana? When mothering and supervising our children, it is of crucial importance that our ability and judgments are not negatively impaired. Because ganja is a plant which grows naturally, it is not uniform or consistent in the percentage of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) which is contained in one dose/bowl/spliff/joint. Also, there is a high degree of variability in the level to which an individual will be affected by a given about of tetrahydrocannabinol. This is conditional on a persons body type/chemistry as well as their current level of tolerance. Therefore, it should be a personal decision to determine how much you can smoke while in charge of your child(ren) and still do your job. (Just like it is a personal decision how much alcohol or prescription medication is safe to take while you are in charge of your kids.)

Secondly, what amount of tetrahydrocannabinols are transferred from mother to baby in breastmilk?
From a study by Chao and collegues, on lactating squirrel monkeys, it has been concluded that roughly 0.2% of 14C-delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol consumed by a mother is passed through her breastmilk to her baby.
It is necessary to make adjustments for body weight as compared to consumption as babies are so much smaller than their mothers. (Also we are not monkeys, but our physiology is similar.) Given this, there is a still only a small fraction of the amount of THC ingested by a mother that is passed to her baby through her breastmilk.
It is every mothers decision to make for herself whether this is an acceptable level of THC for her baby to receive, since it is clear that some amount of tetrahydrocannabinol will be passed through breastmilk.

Finally, is any amount of tetrahydrocannabinol safe for a baby to consume?
Marijuana is, hands down, one of the safest substances for consumption known to humankind. While there are numerous deaths each year due to everything from alcohol to sleeping pills to peanuts, cannabis, in its natural form, has never been the cause of a single death.
This is due to the fact that the human body and brain contains a complex system of cannabinoid receptors which are stimulated by endocannabinoids naturally produced by the human body. Plant substances which stimulate these receptors are phytocannabinoids, such as tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), and also cannabidiol (CBD) and cannabinol (CBN). This endocannabinoid system performs all sorts of functions within the body by regulating with the goal of homeostasis: the maintainance of stable internal environment despite changes in the external environment. This is why it is impossible to overdose on cannabis, in its natural form, unlike other substances such as caffeine, sugar, alcohol, etc. This regulating towards homeostasis is also exactly the reason why cannabis has such diverse and beneficial medicinal qualities from relief of pain, anxiety, nausea, and much more.

From this standpoint, it should be up to the mother (and her partner) to decide what is safe for her baby.
~DAZEY