Last week a House bill to tax and regulate marijuana like alcohol was soundly defeated in the state of New Hampshire. Opponents questioned the wisdom of making another addictive drug legal during a time of drug overdoses and deaths.
Furthermore, an attempt get legalization of recreational use marijuana on the Wyoming ballot failed. “The group fell far short of the roughly 25,600 signatures from registered voters needed to get on November’s ballot.” The Wyoming Senate Judiciary panel issued a favorable recommendation for a bill to make marijuana edibles illegal. (Levi Thamba Pongi , a foreign exchange student at college in Wyoming, became psychotic and committed suicide after eating a marijuana cookie in Colorado in March, 2014.)
Marijuana lobbyists and policy groups are making strong efforts to legalize or decriminalize marijuana in western and northeastern states. Vermont, a bill to legalize marijuana has passed the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Finance Committee.
Vermont gubernatorial candidate Bruce Lisman issued a statement critical of the governor and legislature for acting too quickly. Six Vermont physician groups come out in opposition to legalizing marijuana for recreational use in their state. The state’s health department wrote a scathing attack against legalization.
An state considering legalization needs to recognized the continuous onslaught of problems in the schools of Colorado. Last week, 9 students were negatively affected by marijuana edibles that had gotten into a Colorado High School. ( Maine, the state next to New Hampshire had already rejected a bill to legalize marijuana by a vote of 2 to 1, last summer. )
If Justin Trudeau pushes the legalization effort in Canada, he will into trouble with international treaties, and possibly in the province government of Quebec. The Finance Minister of Quebec warned that it will be hard to push them to sell marijuana.
Government Accountability Office Takes on DOJ for Failure
Today the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report recommending the Department of Justice (DOJ) implement a specific plan for documenting the effects of marijuana legalization.
The report, which Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) requested, states that DOJ has not “documented their monitoring process or provided specificity about key aspects of it[.]” This lack of specificity includes missing information about “potential limitations of the data [DOJ officials] report using and how they will use the data to identify states that are not effectively protecting federal enforcement priorities.”
Each drug has at least one quality that makes worse than all other drugs, and for marijuana it is what it does to the teen-aged brain and motivation, according to Ed Gogek, author of Marijuana Debunked.
Problems on the San Juan Islands
Kathleen Bartholomew, a nurse and a grandmother in the San Juan Islands of Washington, explains what it’s like living in an area with long-time marijuana users: “Of the 7th grade pot users, 80% received the pot from their stoner parents.”
“My own granddaughter went from being a straight-A student skipping her sophomore year in a private school to a pot-smoking 15-year-old in the public school system. Her story started in 7th grade when a few seniors taught her how to smoke marijuana at lunch,” Bartholomew explained.
Washington’s San Juan Islands are in the Puget Sound, near Seattle and British Columbia
“After having a drug coalition for 10 years, we have made zero progress in convincing teens that pot is harmful – because so many parents smoke it in the home. Of 12th graders, there was no change in their belief system after a decade of education.” Here’s a link to the drug coalition’s marijuana education page.
Also in the San Juan Islands, a young man with mental illness issues died tragically from dehydration in jail last year. Keaton Farris suffered from bipolar disorder; a history of marijuana use would be consistent with the tragic ending. The risks for mental illness from early marijuana use cannot be adequately addressed in an environment that glorifies pot use. (His mom sold t-shirts in his honor at Seattle Hemp Fest, which doesn’t prove that Keaton used marijuana, but suggests his family had a peculiar fondness for the weed. The family has reached a settlement in the case.)
Multi-Generational Pot use in California
California has a large medical marijuana program — full of problems. One mother was shocked to find her son first received medical marijuana at age 11 — three years before she knew about it. A doctor didn’t prescribe it; he got it from someone in school whose mother had a medical marijuana card. So clearly parents pass it to children, with or without their knowledge.
Parents who use marijuana go to lengths to rationalize their use of pot. Some say they have more patience and can play better with their children while stoned. These parents are at risk for addiction and building so much tolerance that they will have more anxiety and anger when not using.
With many parents and grandparents using pot, we seem to be creating a multi-generational society of drug addiction. Drug addiction today is multi-substance addiction, making the treatment more complicated and the prognosis worse than it was in the past.
One member of AA and Narcotics Anonymous in Chico, California, explained what happens to multi-generational drug users when they try to get clean. “I need to teach them to dress, bathe and feed the baby, brush their teeth and floss, all skills they did not learn growing up. They must start life anew.” Sobriety gives them hope.
A medical pot shop in Colorado advertised using Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster. Parents and Sesame Street objected and it was removed.
People laud the success of anti-smoking campaigns but what has changed youth smoking rates is the lack of adults who still smoke cigarettes. It has become socially unacceptable. How can an anti-pot campaign for kids can’t work when more adults are eating pot candy, or smoking it, and it’s advertised everywhere?
Recently a father from Washington who drove recklessly and was stoned forced his 12-year-old daughter to walk home. Some of these parents don’t seem to be aware of the trauma they may be forcing their children to experience. Traumatized children will be more inclined to abuse marijuana, alcohol and other drugs.
We need to break cycles of addiction if we are to have healthier adults who don’t follow their parents’ dysfunctional cycles. Compared to 40 or 50 years ago when alcohol was the primary problem, we now have multi-substance addiction. If we stopped substance abuse we could end about 70% of child abuse. We will have more success in rooting out problems by getting to their roots in substance abuse, not possible when we are normalizing drug use.
Finally, we need to comply with international treaties, especially The Rights of the Child Treaty, and as long as we allow marijuana legalization, we are out of compliance with the treaties. For more information, read On Marijuana, edited by Pamela McColl, and Marijuana Debunked, by Ed Gogek, MD.
It is not clear who gave or sold marijuana to Haven Dubois, a 14-year-old boy in Saskatchewan who drowned, but his mother wishes that police had investigated more thoroughly. There were other teens with him, but did the police even try to get the bottom of the issue? “It’s so easy for them to brush it aside. It’s just another dead Indian to them.” Pamela McColl of SAM Canada would like to see those who provide marijuana to teens who suffer harm held accountable, the same way those who give drinks to young people are held responsible for fatal accidents. (McColl is the editor of On Marijuana which contains important essays by international specialists such as Mary Brett of the United Kingdom.)Continue reading Children of Stoner Parents Fall, More Likely to Fail→
