Response: Commentary: Totality of the Evidence Suggests Prenatal Cannabis Exposure Does Not Lead to Cognitive Impairments: A Systematic and Critical Review

摘要

We appreciate the expressed interest of Chaput et al. (2020) in our recent critical review ofthe literature investigating the impact of prenatal cannabis exposure on subsequent cognitivefunctioning of offspring (Torres et al., 2020). We concluded that the available empirical “evidencedoes not suggest that prenatal cannabis exposure alone is associated with clinically significantcognitive functioning impairments.”Chaput et al. asserted that we interpreted our cognitive findings as evidence that prenatalcannabis use is safe in this domain. This is not only untrue but also is a misrepresentation ofour meticulously cautious interpretations of the current published literature. The words “safe” or“safety” do not appear anywhere in our article, but they appear at least six times in the critiqueby Chaput et al. Relatedly, the critique takes exception to our manuscript’s title—Totality ofthe Evidence Suggests Prenatal Cannabis Exposure Does Not Lead to Cognitive Impairments:A Systematic and Critical Review—because, they claim it “implies evidence for the safety ofprenatal cannabis use. . . ” We disagree. A good title should concisely summarize what was doneand what was found (American Psychological Association, 2020). Our title reflects this fundamentalguideline. It is also in line with one of the main points that we emphasized in our article: the needfor precise language in the prenatal cannabis exposure literature. The word “suggests” is includedin our title, but it does not appear in Chaput et al.’s critique. This omission attempts to facilitate thearguments put forth in the critique. Yet, it is both misleading and ignores our recognition of thecaveats associated with the current literature.