Postnatal consequences of maternal marijuana use.

Interest in marijuana’s effects on various aspects of reproduction has a surprisingly long history. In his absorbing account of cannabis, Abel (1980) describes how Eastern European folk medicine has proclaimed for several centuries that marijuana could be used to hasten delivery. Reports from India that circulated widely in Europe discussed marijuana as both a sexual stimulant and a sexual inhibitor and, in the mid 1800s, the U.S. Dispensory (the widely read pharmacopea of the time) reiterated what the Arabs had been saying in the 16th century--that marijuana possessed aphrodisiac properties.