Paternal Marijuana Use Can Affect Offspring, Study Shows

In news that will have well-meaning but stressed out expectant dads in Washington, Nevada, and Oregon saying "aw, fiddlesticks," it turns out that a father's marijuana use before conception can result in brain abnormalities in their offspring. This news comes to us via a study performed at Duke University's Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology, presumably in a joint effort with the Center for Advanced Buzz Killery.

In the study, male lab rats were exposed to kush, with the dankness of said sticky undisclosed. Regardless, cannabis exposure led to changes in the sperm of the test subjects, affecting the brain development of their bouncing baby rats. Neurological pathways in the brains of their little miracles of creation were found to exhibit suppressed activity, leading to "functional deficiencies that affect learning, memory and attention." Previous research projects have focused on the potential dangers of marijuana use in pregnant mothers, but this study is marked for its groundbreaking look at possible side effects in the progeny of male pot users.

Duke University professor Theodore Slotkin laid out why that matters to humans, stating that the same neural pathways that were affected in the rats are also present in people. He also pointed out the importance of these sorts of studies, as recreational marijuana use has now been legalized in 11 states. Medicinal marijuana use is legal in 33.

While jazz cigarettes have long been the popular drug of choice for both Tom Petty fans and teenagers with ten dollars, its long-term effects remain something of a mystery, as federal law in the United States has prohibited research of the substance, as pointed out by Politico. With today's wider acceptance of marijuana use, new studies are being published with astonishing regularity. Of particular concern is a perceived correlation between prenatal marijuana use and brain deficiencies in offspring.