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 Researchers examined data collected from 169,259 U.S. adults from
2002 to 2015. During that time, the proportion of parents with
children at home who said they used cannabis at least once in the
past month rose from 4.9 percent to 6.8 percent.
Over that same period, the proportion of parents with kids at home
who smoked cigarettes declined from 27.6 percent to 20.2 percent,
the study also found.
"While cigarette smoking continues to decline among parents with
children living at home, use of cannabis is increasing among parents
and this may as a result lead to an increase in children’s exposure
to secondhand cannabis smoke," said lead study author Renee Goodwin
of the Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy at the
City University of New York.
The increase in cannabis use appeared to be "disproportionately
common among cigarette smoking parents," Goodwin said by email.
"Therefore we may be seeing an increase in exposure to multiple
types of smoke/increased amount of smoke in a growing percentage of
households with this increase in cannabis use."
With some forms of marijuana now legal in about 30 U.S. states,
concern is mounting in the medical community that many people may
falsely assume the drug is harmless and fail to recognize the
potential harms to children who breathe second-hand smoke.
"Exposure to secondhand smoke is associated with an increased risk
of asthma and many other health risks for children," Goodwin said.
"There have been tremendous public health campaigns aimed at
decreasing cigarette use overall and at reducing children’s exposure
to secondhand smoke from cigarettes, but no clinical or public
health effort has been made to educate or inform the public about
risks of secondhand cannabis smoke."
Cannabis use was almost four times more common among parents who
also smoked cigarettes than among non-smokers, the current study
found.
Among smokers, the proportion of parents who reported using cannabis
in the past month increased from 11 percent to 17.4 percent during
the study period, researchers report in Pediatrics.
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For non-smokers, the proportion of parents who used cannabis in the
past month also rose, from 2.4 percent to 4 percent.
Daily cannabis use also climbed during the study period, and was
more common among cigarette smokers.
At the same time, the proportion of parents who said they avoided
both cigarettes and cannabis also increased.
The study wasn't a controlled experiment designed to prove whether
or how cigarette smoking might influence cannabis use. Another
drawback is that researchers relied on parents to accurately recall
and report any tobacco or cannabis use.
Even so, the findings underscore how legalization of cannabis in
many U.S. states may reflect and reinforce more permissive attitudes
about marijuana use, said Ashley Brooks-Russell, author of an
accompanying editorial and a researcher at the Colorado School of
Public Health at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
"Cannabis legalization has increased the accessibility of cannabis
for adults and removed many penalties for use," Brooks-Russell said
by email. "It is possible these laws also convey a sense the product
is safe, or at least safer than it once was perceived."
When parents with young kids at home do choose to use cannabis, they
should take precautions to do it when children aren’t around,
Brooks-Russell advised.
"If parents use cannabis, not only are they potentially modeling
that behavior but they are likely making cannabis products more
accessible in the home which could lead to either unintentional
ingestion (e.g., poisonings) among younger children, or intentional
experimentation and use among older children," Brooks-Russell said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2GfHJI9 Pediatrics, online May 14, 2018.
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