Washington: A new study suggests that even casual smoking during pregnancy harms a foetus, producing behavioural changes similar to those in babies born to mothers who use illegal drugs like crack cocaine or heroin.

According to a report in 'News.com', this study, conducted at Women and Infants Hospital of Rhode Island and supported by Brown Medical School, involved 27 tobacco-exposed and 29 unexposed full- term newborn infants from comparable social backgrounds with no medical problems. The "nicotine" infants were more excitable, abnormally tense and rigid, requiring more handling and showing greater stress, specifically in their central nervous, gastrointestinal and visual systems.

Barry Lester, senior author of the study and an expert on maternal drug exposure says, "We tolerate smoking in ways that we don't tolerate drugs. Eighteen per cent of women smoke in pregnancy. About three to five per cent of pregnant women use cocaine.

Yet everyone is worried about cocaine. He said that if cigarettes cause a foetus the same injury as illegal drugs, "we should yank newborn babies from women who smoked during pregnancy. We further said that here a legal drug was showing the same effects as an illegal substance for which protective services remove babies from their mothers. We had not faced this policy question about a legal drug before, because this scientific information was not available. But now there was a dire need to re-look at how we evaluate a fit mother." ANI