Demon Weed

Splashed across the front pages of newspapers everywhere last week was the revelation that Johnny may be a murderer because his mommy smoked cigarettes while pregnant. So the demon weed not only causes cancer but crime as well.

    Not so fast.

    This bit of “news” ranks right up there with other mass media myths such as sagging sperm counts and the surge of wife-beating on Super Bowl Sunday — in other words, pure hype.

    The prenatal smoking research so widely cited last week serves a dual purpose. Anti-smoking activists are thrilled to have yet another reason to ban tobacco products, while victimologists will seize any excuse to avoid accountability.

    But an actual reading of the research published in this month’s Archives of General Psychiatry yields more doubt than certainty. In an accompanying commentary, medical researcher David M. Fergusson states: “(I)t would be premature to conclude that maternal prenatal smoking can now be included among the established risk factors for later antisocial behaviors.”

    The study compared the criminal histories of 4,169 Danish men with their exposure to prenatal smoking. Researchers calculated that men whose mothers smoked more than 20 cigarettes a day in their third trimester were two times as likely to have been arrested for a violent crime and 1.8 times as likely to be habitual offenders.

    Tempting though it may be to regard such findings as useful, the study is far from conclusive. The sample included only 62 subjects whose mothers smoked more than 20 cigarettes daily during pregnancy. And little consideration was given to a variety of other factors.

    Drug and alcohol use, for example, were not considered, nor was the socioeconomic status of the family beyond the child’s first year of life or his educational attainment. Also ignored was the absence or presence of a father.

    But even if the research methodology was unassailable, what then? Should pregnant women be prosecuted for smoking, or their offspring acquitted by reason of maternal tobacco use?

    Whether through nature or nurture, every individual is predisposed to a variety of risks throughout life. We can heighten or diminish our vulnerability, however. No matter what the fear-mongers say, what really counts are the choices we make.

Our view

Research claiming to show that heavy smoking causes women to give birth to criminals fails to take into account various other explanations.

Opposing view

Mothers who smoke a lot of cigarettes while pregnant are more likely to produce children who commit crimes.