Critics are calling “reefer madness” on a new study from Australia claiming smoking pot will give your kids cancer.

Cannabis has been shown in cell, animal and limited human trials to prevent, halt or kill cancer, researchers note. Australia is getting world-famous for their reefer-madness research, this time for equating pot to the notorious birth defect-causing chemical thalidomide.

On Tuesday, Associate Professor Stuart Reece and Professor Gary Hulse at The University of Western Australia released a paper called “Chromothripsis and epigenomics complete causality criteria for cannabis- and addiction-connected carcinogenicity, congenital toxicity and heritable genotoxicity”, published July 2016 in the journal “Mutation Research”.

A press release from the university paper ran the chilling conclusion that pot smokers were damaging their DNA, and effectively giving their kids cancer. “The worst cancers are reported in the first few years of  life in children exposed in utero to cannabis effects,” one researcher said.

But...