Tag Archives: California

Tragic Accidents Related to Marijuana Involve Children

15-year-old driver high on pot paralyzes boy, rips truck into 3 parts near Seattle

When states legalize marijuana for adults, children are in danger, too.  Here’s recent traffic accidents involving marijuana. Eight are dead, three of them children.

  1.  A 7-year-old boy is paralyzed, because a girl driving under the influence of marijuana smashed into his dad’s pickup truck near Seattle on May 24, 2016.  The unlicensed, 15-year-old driver was in a BMW, with a 24-year-old man and a 5-year-old child.  The man driving the truck sustained critical injuries, with his truck  torn into three parts.  (photo above: Kent fire department)
  2. An  8-year old girl, Peyton Knowlton, who was hit and killed while riding her bicycle in Longmont, Colorado, on May 20.  Newspaper articles on July 27 report that the police investigation confirms that the 20-year-old driver high had been high on marijuana at the time.  He was below the legal age for purchasing marijuana.  (A video on below shows the scene of the accident.)

    peyton.knowlton.gofundme
    Peyton Knowlton from a gofundme page, as shared in an article on Westword.com
  3. In Boulder, Colorado on May 7, a 17-year-old was driving home from smoking pot with friends when he plowed through a stoplight while stoned and killed two young adults.   It means that at least two deadly accidents in Boulder County involved marijuana during the month of May.
  4. July, 2016: A Wisconsin teen admitted to using marijuana shortly before his vehicle missed a stop sign and collided with an SUV. The driver was a 17-year old.  His 16-year-old passenger died, as did an adult in another vehicle. The driver was in intensive care.
  5. June, 2016: Authorities in Arizona believe the woman who caused a deadly crash was driving under the influence of marijuana. Court documents reveal the woman was driving at least 75 mph in a 40 mph zone when she crossed the center line, plowing into an oncoming vehicle and killing a man and his daughter.   A 2-year-old and 4-year-old were injured.
  6. In Virginia, a 27-year-old father drove under the influence of marijuana with three children in the car.  He  collided with an oncoming train and the youngest, a 3-year-old girl, died on March 25, 2015.  Last month he was sentenced to three years in prison.

We wrote about bicyclists’ deaths recently.   In Boulder County, three died in two accidents in May.  Here’s a video from the report after Peyton Knowlton’s death, which occurred in Longmont:

The Addiction Paradigm Shift Away from Heroin to Marijuana

Drug Epidemic isn’t Because of Opiate Pills

“If you only know opiate addiction through the media or the political debates right now, or the political rhetoric, you’re going to be under the impression it’s because doctors are over-prescribing opiate medication.”    It’s not true at all, said Jon Daily LCSW, CADC II, on March 17, 2016, at Sierra Vista Hospital in Sacramento.  The topic of his talk was Heroin to Marijuana: A Paradigm Shift We Need Now.

Daily says that “drug bias” is enabling the epidemic of heroin addiction among youth today. Like others who work in treatment and recovery, Daily knows that addiction to substances of abuse are interconnected.  Frequent marijuana users are more likely to become alcohol or heroin addicts.   A study by researchers from Columbia and Yeshiva University — released in April — showed the likelihood of alcohol use disorder to be 5x more likely for people who were marijuana users at an earlier time period.

Daily challenged the counselors, therapists and physicians in the room to think differently about the connection between the choice of drug and addiction. “I want you to close your eyes and imagine your child. And then imagine that you got a call that that your child was caught using alcohol. Now imagine that you got a call that your child was using marijuana,” he said. Daily paused a few seconds to let those thoughts settle in. “And now imagine that you got a call that your child was using heroin. It feels different, doesn’t it?” he said.

“Drug bias” gets in the way of intervening sooner and more effectively when parents and professionals discover that a young person is using.  Daily explained: “Addiction doesn’t really matter which drug is involved.”

NIDApercentages
The chart was published by NIDA in November 2015

Now that the big concern of today is heroin, the bigger concern should be that the addiction was there long before the heroin was there.   His remarks were consistent with Sven-Olov Carlsson’s statement about the ineffectual drug policies that have led to the heroin problem.

It Starts with Weed, not Opiates or Heroin

“So if you’ve been using drugs for a long time, say weed, or alcohol, then you might try a lot of pills, then try another drug,”  Daily explained.  He emphasized that addiction is not so much about the specific drug but about the development of reward systems.   (The most recent surveys of drug use by American teens shows that  6% of high school seniors are daily marijuana users, 3x the rate of the next biggest drug of abuse, alcohol.  With this rate of abuse, it’s logical to predict that heroin problems will continue, or get worse.)

Before his talk, Daily surveyed the doctors with whom he associates. He asked them, “Of the opiate addicts you treated, how did it start?”  He found that 98% percent of the clients his associates work with were already addicted to another drug when they started to get pain pills.  (He acknowledges there are those who get addicted to pain pills after a car accident and multiple surgeries, but he emphasizes that this group is in a tiny minority.)  Daily doesn’t explain addiction as simply being about genetics, or about addictive personality.  One’s first reaction to opiates is affected by trauma experiences earlier in life, shame experiences in childhood. It’s affect disregulation, but not clearly understood.

AddictionThere needs to be greater understanding of the nature of addiction with medical practitioners.  Prescriptions for opiate painkillers can lead to a dependency that evolves into heroin use which is cheaper and easy to access via the internet.

However, the low perception of harm with youth using marijuana contributes to the heroin epidemic because most people do not understand a) that addiction to heroin and marijuana are essentially the same disease, and b) the THC levels of marijuana (the chemical component that gives the intoxication) are much higher today than in previous time periods.

The ways in which kids are using pot in high concentrations, known as wax/dabs and oils consumed as edibles (cookies, candies, etc.), makes it very addictive and can also cause psychotic breaks.

Daily urges medical and healing professionals to advocate for education and intervention when the first known instance of use of alcohol and drugs by a minor child. “It is much easier and more cost-effective to do prevention and early intervention than to reverse the harm from long-term addiction,” he said. Daily supports the CARA Act which will provide Naloxone or Suboxone to addicts. “And yet our system is set up to reverse the harm too long after onset of addiction.”

Daily’s comments are consistent with a position we have advocated to advance drug prevention.  Jon Daily is the founder and clinical director for Recovery Happens Counseling Services in Fair Oaks, Davis and Rosedale.  He specializes in the outpatient treatment of adolescents, young adults and their families with addictive disorders and dual diagnosis issues. He is the co-author of (2006) “How to Help Your Child Become Drug Free,” and (2012) “Adolescent and Young Adult Addiction: The Pathological Relationship to Intoxication and the Interpersonal Neurobiology Underpinnings.” Jon has been an instructor to nurses, medical residents and has taught post-doctoral students for UC Davis. Currently he instructs graduate students for University of San Francisco.

Please watch the complete Video.

Hot Cars, Pools, Pot, More Victims of Child Neglect: Part 3

(Part 1 shows child justice failures in Court. Part 2 of this series is about neglected children who died in fires. Part 3 covers children who die in hot cars and in drownings. Part 4 explains parents who are addicted or psychotic from marijuana. Part 5 shows how children die through violence related to potPart 6 presents a solution. Read a previous article,Three Children Die in Colorado.)

The marijuana lobby tells us they advocate for “responsible use of marijuana.” The impairment and forgetfulness of these parents proves that “responsible use” doesn’t work with parenting.  See our updated fact sheet about 53 children who have died from parents’ pot use since November 2012.

Deaths in Hot Cars

The death of Tyler and William Jensen, two years  and four years, was particularly sad. The boys died from being left in a hot car while their mom smoked pot. They were Colorado’s first child neglect victims of a parent’s pot use after the successful vote to legalize in 2012. It’s interesting that Heather Jensen’s lawyer defended her by claiming low IQ accounted for her lack of judgment. A long-term study indicates that frequent, early pot use leads to a significant drop in IQ over time. She was 24 at the time. Heather Jensen’s activity suggests addiction, coming from chronic use at a young age. Continue reading Hot Cars, Pools, Pot, More Victims of Child Neglect: Part 3

Parents’ Pot Use Leads to Neglect, Death in Fires, Part 2

(Part 1 shows child justice failures in Court. Part 2 of this series is about neglected children who died in fires. Part 3 covers children who die in hot cars and in drownings. Part 4 explains parents who are addicted or psychotic from marijuana. Part 5 shows how children die through violence related to pot. Part 6 presents a solution. Download our updated fact sheet on 80 deaths from marijuana. Read a previous article,Three Children Die in Colorado.)

43 Unnecessary Deaths, the Innocent Victims of Parents’ Pot Habits

On January 13, 2014, two-year old Levi Welton tragically died in a fire in Colorado while his parents smoked pot. Also in January, 2014, Heather Jensen was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for the deaths of her sons, ages 2 and 4. The Jensen boys died in a hot car while their mom left them and smoked pot — a few weeks after Colorado’s historic vote to legalize marijuana.

The stories were in the Denver news the same month that recreational marijuana stores opened in Colorado, January 2014.  The national press ignored these two horror stories with a marijuana connection, but made a huge issue of marijuana commercialization, the story promoted by the marijuana industry. Continue reading Parents’ Pot Use Leads to Neglect, Death in Fires, Part 2