AN Oldham councillor has voiced concerns children's developing brains are being harmed by passively consuming ‘skunk’ smoked by their parents in "every other house" in some parts of the borough.

St James ward councillor Cath Ball raised the issue at a town hall meeting during a discussion on borough health targets.

She told colleagues that cannabis was in "every other house" in some areas of Oldham, and there could be a "problem" if children’s development is being set back by the drug.

Her concerns were prompted by a recent study by the University of Montreal that suggested that teenagers using cannabis are causing long-lasting damage to their developing brains.

Cllr Ball queried what more the council could do to promote reducing cannabis use for parents and pregnant mothers, similar to schemes to discourage smoking.

“I wondered if that report has sort of filtered down, because skunk is like every other house in some areas,” she said.

“If it has, as this Canadian professor’s saying, affected growing brains then we’re going to have a bit of a problem in Oldham and other places because it’s massive, the use of skunk.

“And children are passively smoking it.”

Katrina Stephens, interim director of public health, replied that they were working with charitable trust Positive Steps, through schools and community groups, to provide education to young people about the dangerous effects of alcohol and cannabis.

“And skunk is within that as well just because we know that those are the substances that young people are most likely to come into contact with, and we’re focusing on those,” she said.

“Looking at parental use, with the new drug and alcohol service for the borough, that’s recently gone live in April with Turning Point.”

Assessing the wider state of health and well-being for children, Ms Stephens said the borough was actually outperforming the national average in areas such as child immunisations, homelessness and hospital admissions for mental health conditions.

But there were areas where they were trying to improve performance, and that is where the organisation is now focusing its attention.

Ms Stephens added: “On infant and child mortality we’re looking at how we can improve the provision of high quality maternity care by implementing Department of Health guidance on best practice to improve care.

“We’re also doing things like increasing access to stop smoking services in pregnancy and we’ve also got a specialised outreach service in communities where we know that there are high numbers of parents who are blood relatives, where that’s more common.

“So that tries to respond to areas where we know we’ve got higher rates of infant mortality and put interventions and services in place accordingly.”

She added: “Children’s health and well-being is also a priority for Oldham Cares.

“There is some really innovative work going on in the borough about children’s mental health.”