Carceral Pharmacology: Historicizing the Sciences of Cannabis and Pregnancy

In September 2022, the American National Institutes of Health issued a media advisory warning about the growing science surrounding the “negative effects of prenatal cannabis exposure.” Drawing on history, science studies, and the anthropology of reproduction, this article describes and analyzes the social history of scientific literature on cannabis use and pregnancy from 1967–2022. I use a scoping-review method to assemble an archive of scientific studies on cannabis and pregnancy, critically examining how the logics of the War on Drugs continue to pervade thinking and practice across the biological, psychiatric, and public health sciences—a phenomenon I call “carceral pharmacology.” I trace how the influence of anti-cannabis policies and rhetoric on the making of cannabis and pregnancy science has led to the reemergence of a “crisis” frame today. I underscore how the harms of drug prohibition are maintained into cannabis legalization through scientific knowledge at the molecular level of the body’s endocannabinoid system, reinforcing historically enduring unjust practices and imaginaries of reproduction and health.