On April 7, New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez vetoed a bill which would have made opioid addiction a qualifying condition for medical marijuana. Governor Martinez has consistency shown leadership in working to prevent drug addiction. Earlier this year, legislators in New Mexico wisely rejected a bill to legalize pot,.
Maryland legislators recently proposed using marijuana to treat heroin addiction. They removed the provision from the bill after researchers explained there’s no evidence that cannabis is effective in treating addiction.
The mass insanity surrounding cures from “medical” marijuana sometimes comes from the Press. As the number of newsprint subscribers dwindles, newspapers are looking to marijuana for new sources of advertising money. (The New York Times, Seattle Times, Los Angeles Times and Denver Post are pro-marijuana newspapers.) Another problem is that the marijuana industry’s paid lobbyists are pumping unscientific information to state legislators. Many of these lobbyists have advanced degrees in Social Policy, Law or Political Science, but not the biological sciences.
Marijuana , Opioid Addiction and Heroin
Tyler Martel, finally free of opioid addiction, was getting his life back on track when the state of Washington legalized marijuana. On December 5, 2012, marijuana became 100% legal for those ages 21 and over. A few days later, Martel refused to drink with his parents, but smoked marijuana before driving. His car crossed the center lane, and both he and his fiancé, also 27, died. Another man was badly injured in that crash. Martel died a victim of the “safer than alcohol” phrase that the marijuana lobby used to gain acceptance for legalization.
Dr. Mark Willenbring, an addictions psychiatrist, believes that alternative treatments are needed for pain, but not another drug of abuse. He doesn’t believe you can solve the problem of addiction with another drug of abuse. “The concept on its face is absurd,” he said. “It doesn’t work,” he said. “Like trying to cure alcoholism with Valium.”
Pam Garozzo and Carlos, who lost his life Dec. 23, after 10 months of being off drugs. She told Gov. Christie’s panel at the White House that marijuana had been a gateway for her son.
Stop Denying the Potential Gateway Effect
Generally speaking, marijuana is already in the mix of drugs used by those who abuse opiates. Those who use heroin invariably are using other drugs, including marijuana. In fact, a group of parents in Massachusetts recently made a video tribute to 79 of their children who died from drugs. In all cases, the deceased sons and daughters had started their drug use with cannabis.
When Governor Chris Christie convened a panel on the drug epidemic at the White House last week, a mother, spoke. Pam Garozzo, whose son Carlos died from drugs in December, said her son had started smoking marijuana at age 15-1/2. For him it was a gateway drug, and he’d be the first to tell you. He died of heroin that had been laced with fentanyl–after being clean for 10 months.
Last Tuesday the Vermont House of Representatives planned to vote on a bill to allow possession and home grows for marijuana. However, when it came to a floor vote, the pot proponents knew there were not enough votes to pass the bill.
Even though Vermont’s former governor supported legalization, a legalization bill failed miserably in the Vermont House last year. The new bill is less expansive than last year’s bill, but legalization appears to be headed for failure this year.
Vermont’s new governor, Phil Scott, has made it clear that the legislature needs to find safeguards against drugged driving. There is no simple test to measure stoned driving, as there is for drunk driving. Individuals have a legal right to refuse a blood test, and police must get a court order to administer the tests. THC levels in the blood may go down during the waiting period.
Crash scene of double fatality, which killed Richard Tom and Joseph Marshall on April 26, 2015. The driver who had been speeding, also had a very high THC measure in his blood. Photo: Elizabeth Murray, in the Burlington Free Press file.
More than 16 news articles from 8/16/16 through 10/23/16 reveal a virtual feeding frenzy among Maryland state legislators, marijuana bureaucrats and would-be pot contractors squabbling over access to profits from the federally-illegal addictive dangerous child brain poison, marijuana being falsely promoted as “medicine” under recent drug-trafficker-friendly Maryland state laws.
Examples of such corrupt pro-drug legislative activities are illustrated in the Washington Post’s 9/23/16 article titled: “Delegate’s medical pot roles reviewed.”
But two recent official federal government reports categorically confirm from numerous scientific studies that smoked marijuana is not medicine but instead is a dangerous Schedule 1 drug that endangers the health and safety of users, especially youths. And is a major gateway drug to addiction to other deadly drugs.
And the new November 2016 U.S. Surgeon General’s Report on Addiction stated categorically “None of the permitted uses under state laws alters the status of marijuana and its constituent compounds as illicit drugs under Schedule I of the federal Controlled Substances Act.”
Additionally, the Surgeon General’s report stated, “Marijuana use, in adolescents in particular, can cause negative neurological effects. Long-term, regular use starting in the young adult years may impair brain development and functioning… And marijuana use—particularly long-term, chronic use or use starting at a young age—can also lead to dependence and addiction.”
Further, annual national drug overdose death rates currently reported by the CDC, are skyrocketing at all-time high levels and increasing rapidly. To illustrate the enormity of this U.S. drug death plague, if caskets of the 500 victims ofdrug-related deaths that occur daily in the U.S. were stacked up alongside the Washington Monument, they would extend to nearly twice the height of that monument!
From our direct experience with this drug holocaust among our children typically beginning with marijuana, we Parents published a full page ad in the 1/23/17 Washington Times offering specific suggestions for federal legislation to fix that urgent and growing national public health crisis.
Therefore, we Maryland Parents urge our Governor and State Legislators to immediately recognize the imminent danger to all Maryland citizens from this unprecedented drug overdose death public health crisis and end the drug-money fueled attempts to create and promote a federally-illegal marijuana industry in Maryland. And instead adopt protective legislation such as those suggested in our Washington Times ad.
Otherwise those of you who continue to support the current headlong rush to enable and promote a federally-illegal marijuana industry in Maryland, will be shamefully responsible for continuing the dope-money-fueled destruction of our children, families, schools and communities throughout this State.
DeForest Rathbone is a Board Member, Parents Affected By Addiction (PABA). He can be reached in Leonardtown, MD, 301-994-2733, [email protected]
Editor’s Note: Last week the Police Chief of Prince George’s County Maryland announced a marked increase in crime due to the decriminalization of marijuana.
Smart Approaches to Marijuana has the Answer for Senator Warren
Last year Sen. Elizabeth Warren asked the CDC if marijuana can be used to fight the opioid epidemic. There’s an answer in Smart Approaches to Marijuana’s recent publication, its educational toolkit for 2017. The publication refers to academic studies which suggest that marijuana primes the brain for other types of drug usage, alcohol and heroin. Here’s the summary on that subject from page 4, Marijuana and Other Drugs: A Link We Can’t Ignore :
MORE THAN FOUR in 10 people who ever use marijuana will go on to use other illicit drugs, per a large, nationally representative sample of U.S. adults.(1) The CDC also says that marijuana users are three times more likely to become addicted to heroin.(2)
Although 92% of heroin users first used marijuana before going to heroin, less than half used painkillers before going to heroin.
And according to the seminal 2017 National Academy of Sciences report, “There is moderate evidence of a statistical association between cannabis use and the development of substance dependence and/or a substance abuse disorder for substances including alcohol, tobacco, and other illicit drugs.”(3)
RECENT STUDIES WITH animals also indicate that marijuana use is connected to use and abuse of other drugs. A 2007 Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology study found that rats given THC later self administered heroin as adults, and increased their heroin usage, while those rats that had not been treated with THC maintained a steady level of heroin intake.(4) Another 2014 study found that adolescent THC exposure in rats seemed to change the rodents’ brains, as they subsequently displayed “heroin-seeking” behavior. Youth marijuana use could thus lead to “increased vulnerability to drug relapse in adulthood.”(5)
The National Institutes of Health says that research in this area is “consistent with animal experiments showing THC’s ability to ‘prime’ the brain for enhanced responses to other drugs. For example, rats previously administered THC show heightened behavioral response not only when further exposed to THC, but also when exposed to other drugs such as morphine—a phenomenon called cross-sensitization.”(6)
Suggestions that one addictive substance replaces another ignores the problem of polysubstance abuse, the common addiction of today.
ADDITIONALLY, THE MAJORITY of studies find that marijuana users are often polysubstance users, despite a few studies finding limited evidence that some people substitute marijuana for opiate medication. That is, people generally do not substitute marijuana for other drugs. Indeed, the National Academy of Sciences report found that “with regard to opioids, cannabis use predicted continued opioid prescriptions 1 year after injury. Finally, cannabis use was associated with reduced odds of achieving abstinence from alcohol, cocaine, or polysubstance use after inpatient hospitalization and treatment for substance use disorders” [emphasis added].(7)
Moreover, a three-year 2016 study of adults also found that marijuana compounds problems with alcohol. Those who reported marijuana use during the first wave of the survey were more likely than adults who did not use marijuana to develop an alcohol use disorder within three years.(8) Similarly, alcohol consumption in Colorado has increased slightly since legalization. (9)
Senator Warren, you’re deeply respected by youth. You could be a powerful spokesperson by advocating for them not to use drugs. The problem is that — for some young people — that critical first choice to use a drug turns into a game of Russian Roulette.
Parents who lost children to drugs overwhelmingly insist their children initiated drug use with marijuana and alcohol. Marijuana advocates insist marijuana is “not a gateway” drug, but studies show otherwise. Marijuana is a gateway to other drugs for 40+ percent of those who start using pot. It is never wise to substitute one drug of addiction for another drug of addiction. Please consider that not everyone who becomes addicted to opiates started because of pain. Many started for fun. According to a Jon Daily of Recovery Happens, most begin pain pill abuse because their relationship with intoxication began as a relationship with marijuana and/or alcohol.
There are many other ways to treat the opiate epidemic: better prevention programs, mandating education in the schools and clamping down on internet sellers of these drugs. Studies claiming fewer overdose deaths occur in marijuana states need to consider the availability of suboxone, other drugs to counter the overdose.
Senator Warren, please check out Smart Approaches to Marijuana, which advocates an alternative to legalization which does not include incarceration. In our next article, Senator Warren, we will discuss the marijuana-mental illness links………… once again.
FOOTNOTES:
Secades-Villa R, Garcia-Rodríguez O, Jin CJ, Wang S, Blanco C Probability and predictors of the cannabis gateway effect: a national study. Int J Drug Policy. 2015;26(2):135-142
2. Centers for Disease Control. Today’s heroin epidemic Infographics more people at risk, multiple drugs abused. CDC, 7 July 2015.
3. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Health and Medicine Division; Board on Population Health andPublic Health Practice; Committee on the Health Effects of Marijuana: An Evidence Review and Research Agenda (“2017 NAS Report”).
4. Ellgren, Maria et al. “Adolescent Cannabis Exposure Alters Opiate Intake and Opioid Limbic Neuronal Populations in Adult Rats.”Neuropsychopharmacology 32.3 (2006): 607–615.
5. Stropponi, Serena et al. Chronic THC during adolescence increases the vulnerability to stress-induced relapse to heroin seeking in adult rats. European Neuropsychopharmacology Volume 24 , Issue 7 (2014), 1037 – 1045.
6. “Is marijuana a gateway drug?” National Institute on Drug Abuse. Jan. 2017. See also Panlilio LV, Zanettini C, Barnes C, Solinas M, Goldberg SR. Prior exposure to THC increases the addictive effects of nicotine in rats. Neuropsychopharmacol Off Publ Am Coll Neuropsychopharmacol. 2013;38(7):1198-1208; Cadoni C, Pisanu A, Solinas M, Acquas E, Di Chiara G. Behavioural sensitization after repeated exposure to Delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol and cross-sensitization with morphine. Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2001;158(3):259-266.
7. 2017 NAS report.
8. Weinberger AH, Platt J, Goodwin RD. Is cannabis use associated with an increased risk of onset and persistence of alcohol use disorders? A three-year prospective study among adults in the United States. Drug Alcohol Depend. February 2016.
9. Rocky Mountain HIDTA Investigative Support Center Strategic Intelligence Unit. The Legalization of Marijuana in Colorado: The Impact, Volum
