Teens shouldn’t smoke marijuana, but they do.
And now that we have medical marijuana, it behooves us to find ways to keep the stuff out of the greedy little hands of our youth (if you’ve had teenagers, you know they have greedy little hands) in the same way that we keep them from picking pills out of the Valium bottle.
Last week, the Pima County-Tucson Commission on Addiction Prevention and Treatment (www.commissiononaddiction.org) hosted a panel discussion that included, among other things, some talk about medical marijuana. So I went to the forum.
It was like walking into the lion’s den.
I felt a little naked in there among all of the medical-marijuana naysayers, and the prim-and-proper ladies in coordinated business suits and Pima County-Tucson Commission on Addiction Prevention and Treatment nametags.
Of course, I didn’t expect a marijuana-friendly crowd.
A teen in the audience raised the topic of marijuana, asking the panel members how they think the new medical-marijuana paradigm would affect teens. The discussion turned to availability and access.
Ward 2 City Councilmember Paul Cunningham, who is currently running to retain his seat, said he worries about the secondary market that the program creates. He fears enterprising patients will divert the 2.5 ounces they can buy every two weeks.
“That’s a lot of weed,” he said.
Cunningham thinks the number of teens who have tried marijuana—which lags about 20 percentage points behind the number who have tried alcohol—will rise with the new availability.
Richard Elías, who represents District 5 on the Pima County Board of Supervisors, agreed the new law will increase availability. But he said he accepts the unintended consequences, which are not uncommon with any good law. If medical marijuana had been available to ease his mother’s pain as she died of diabetes, he would have tried it, he said.
“And I wouldn’t have been ashamed of it,” he said.
Tucson Police Lt. Mike Pryor, who isn’t running for anything but represented the department on the panel, ramped up the discussion by implying that the program was going to lead to pot at the playground, so to speak. He emphatically told the seemingly supportive audience that kids’ primary source of marijuana is home.
“They aren’t getting it from other sixth-graders,” he said, citing his own experience as a police officer—while admitting he had no empirical evidence.
Not true, Mike. Since you didn’t have any, I looked up some empirical evidence.
Each year for the past 15 or so years, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University has scientifically surveyed teens about drug use. This is the group that famously told the world it was easier for U.S. teens to get pot than alcohol, and that about a quarter of them can get the sticky inside an hour.
Guess what? Teens aren’t riding their bikes home to snatch medical marijuana from their parents’ stash; they’re getting it on the street. The CASA survey showed in 2009 that 24 percent of kids get pot from friends; 13 percent get it at school; and 4 percent from drug-dealers.
How many get marijuana from parents? Just 1 percent.
So, Mike, your observations are way, way off.
Beryl Baker, a Green candidate for City Council in Ward 1, doesn’t think the medical pot program, as it’s written, will affect teens at all. Mary DeCamp, the Green Party candidate for mayor, is more concerned about teens getting prescription drugs than a comparatively harmless God-given plant, she said.
This last comment drew a decidedly immature, audible scoff and then laughter from a handful of audience members, at least one of whom was wearing the aforementioned prim-and-proper business suit and name tag, and who proceeded to talk behind her hand to the person next to her through the rest of DeCamp’s statement.
She didn’t interrupt Lt. Pryor’s statement.
It seemed to me like most of the people in the room, which was largely occupied by supporters of the hosting commission, had already decided medical marijuana is bad. It didn’t feel like an open, honest discussion. It didn’t seem like an attempt to talk about how to help teens understand.
It seemed more like a lion’s den.
This article appears in Oct 13-19, 2011.
As we said in high school: SMOKE DOPE!
I thought MM was SUPPOSED to be for cancer/lymphoma or some other debilitating diseases. Apparently all you have to claim is Cranial-Rectalitis-Liberalis-Gravis, pony up the cash, and voila! Instant MM card! What a friggin JOKE!
I am not surprised by JM’s report, as I am sure most of us are not, who are reading this column. MJ opponents’ only weapon against MJ is misinformation, perpetuated by close-mindedness (I wonder how many of these folks were ‘over 65’ C.C.? Not many I’ll bet!). This has been proven time and again by the ever ‘misplaced’ empirical data. Just an FYI, my own ’empirical data’ has shown me that the opposite of the mis-stated facts regarding teen acquisition of MJ is the fact. Many of the MJ using parents get their own supply by raiding their teens rooms! I have an MMJ card, and I have no idea where to get MMJ, other than by paying a ‘donation’ of double and triple street value, to a ‘compassion club’ (who have very little compassion for my wallet.) So I can legally use it, but it is illegal to buy/sell in AZ, and illegal federally, to ship from elsewhere. Catch-22. So ‘Pup’, you are partially right, it is a ‘friggin’ joke’, but it is on us!! BTW, rather than ‘thinking’ you know the law, try looking it up, rather than like most mis-information spreaders, just spouting what you ‘thought it was SUPPOSED to be for’! ARS 36-2801.3: “Debilitating medical condition” means one or more of the following: (a) Cancer, glaucoma, positive status for human immunodeficiency virus, acquired immune deficiency syndrome, hepatitis C, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, crohn’s disease, agitation of alzheimer’s disease or the treatment of these conditions.
(b) A chronic or debilitating disease or medical condition or its treatment that produces one or more of the following: cachexia or wasting syndrome; severe and chronic pain; severe nausea; seizures, including those characteristic of epilepsy; or severe and persistent muscle spasms, including those characteristic of multiple sclerosis.
(c) Any other medical condition or its treatment added by the department pursuant to section 36-2801.01.
The only ‘friggin’ joke’, is the fact that there are laws against it at all! Medical or otherwise. All one has to do is ‘pony up the cash’ at any supermarket, to obtain alcohol, for which 75,000 deaths per year, are attributed in the US alone, (Zero for MJ!) or pony up the copay cash to your family MD & pharmacy, for an Rx for ‘legal’ drugs that killed 783,936 people in 2003 (up another 68% since then- 0 for MJ). But that’s OK. It’s ‘LEGAL’!
Oh what a tangled web we weave…
OBTW-1 RE: Misinformation/close-mindedness. I don’t know how many of you/us, watch the very popular TV show, ‘Criminal Minds’, but the show, which the public largely believe are true FBI stories, had an episode last night, where some kid shot, bombed and killed 13 others (no he was not smoking MJ) and the one that got away alive, was deemed by the FBI ‘expert’, SSA Dr. Reid, to have been “saved by his marijuana addiction”, because he was off smoking a doob, while the others were killed.
As most ‘educated’ people are well aware by now, marijuana is not ‘addictive’, but all this show did was perpetuate the myth, by having a supposedly knowledgeable character, spout this dumb rhetoric. I am surprised at CBS for allowing this mis-information to be aired out of context (context being that this character is in fact biased and misinformed… as are most FBI personnel.). This show is now off my favorites list!
It amazes me still how freely scripts are dolled out for Adderall (pharmaceutical-grade meth) at the U of A. It’s like EVERY kid there is suffering from ADD or whatever. There’s A LOT of students using it, and it’s not much talked about. I’d love to see the study on those greedy fingers?
… and what, in fact, is up those people’s asses? I mean, it’s not just a pot leaf, is it?
Anyway, cops hate pot smokers. It’s just the way they were engineered. It’s like they’ve gone berserk with the Milgram experiment. Until the cops get some deprogramming, that herd is SLOW to change.
Call your elected – or soon to be elected – officials, and ask what their position is on MMJ.
Why are Addiction Industry(TM) tools clutching their pearls about “availability” vis-à-vis medical cannabis when Big Pharma’s new flavors of speed, painkiller, anti-psychotic, et cetera every year or so draw nary a discontented sigh even when targeted to children?
Are their 401Ks tied up in Pharma stock?
Do they really know better but have to toe the “reefer madness” line in order to keep their grants coming in? (Federal grants come from agencies whose appropriations are determined by Congress which is owned by ….) People tend to get defensive when their paychecks might be on the line.
Or perhaps, as with anti-LGBT bigots, those who hate the loudest have their own secrets. Isn’t Ritalin the new “mother’s little helper”?
The zero deaths from MJ is not correct. First, MJ is a carcinogen and there have been recorded deaths from lung cancer in people who smoked MJ exclusively. Great Britain now keeps a registry of those deaths. And then, there are the people who died in car crashes while high on MJ, or doesn’t that count?
I feel teenagers should use public parks to play volleyball and enjoy their parks.
Due to the terrible laws about MJ, many parks are used for dealers which takes our parks from teenagers.
The choice to use or not to use MJ will never change, please continue your wonderful reporting.
you are just mad you missed the jackboot raffle after the meeting.these people could not care less about our youth,it is all about control.the old mantra “if it saves one child”,it should be illegal.too bad about the other tens of thousands young people who have their lives destroyed by the draconian drug laws,their only mistake being youthful indescretion. but someone has to fill all our prisons.those smug little “drug abolitionists” are really sociopaths who victimize people more often than help.using the youth as a excuse to keep marijuana from the sick shows little compassion for both.the parents are always the answer.if you show children unconditional love and compassion from the beginning they will listen to you .telling teens we should let the sick suffer without their med bud because we do not trust the youth is a very hurtful and dangerous message.now lets have a meeting on how to keep our kids out of mexico.drugs are de-criminalized there.viva mexico!
AZRLS, it’s the smoking (vs. other means of intake), like tobacco, that affects the lungs, not the marijuana itself. There is no chemical in marijuana that is carcinogenic in and of itself. In addition, it’s the changes in judgment (as a side effect), like alcohol, that leads to car accidents. There is nothing INHERENT in marijuana that is fatal, unlike opiate painkillers and other legal drugs. A comparison of the scientific research on both the benefits and harmful side effects of medical marijuana vs. traditional medications is truly eye-opening!
Hmmm….let’s try a little ‘research’ of our own. Determine to ‘interview’ 20 people who struggled with addiction to illegal drugs in their life. Ask them what the first drug they tried was and how old they were when they tried it.
I can tell you that I think its important for those who need MJ should get it, however, the regulations that are in place by the voters, cigarettes have stricter regulations. That’s what has most people who have sat down and read the entire law concerns these people. Like most frustrated people they don’t know any other why to draw attention to it. What’s has happened is the concerned majority expected everyone else to vote down the proposition because they didn’t have time or what ever to go vote. many who voted didn’t really know much about what was on the ballots and voted based on the what they heard from someone or what they seem on TV. I suggest that before any more people enter the lions den or or speak out they READ this new law beginning to end then they can draw their own conclusions.
Whoa, on the comment about “those over 65” I’m a 75 yr old fem and I love my loaded brownies! Smoking is bad for the lungs, for sure! My, my how the weed does increase the commentaries!
That is because LT. Michael Pryor live-in girl friend Smokes Pot!
Over the last 12yrs. I have taken Morphin and have redust my intake, due to Marijuna and I’m close to 70 yrs old. it even helps w/my Arthritis.
I first tryed Marijuana at age 19 didn’t think much of it. In my 50’s I had a spinal cored engery and in a lot of pain, all the drugs in the world couldn’t help me. My Doctor in Colo. said why don’t you try some marijuana, well I did and here we are today and I’m do-en great thank to the voters of Arizona.
I am not and have never been a pot smoker, HOWEVER, you could not find a stronger advocate for the new medical marijuana law than me. My youngest (adult) son died from a form of cancer that is EXTREMELY painful, but despite being able to control most of his pain with opiates and his anxiety with other drugs, they left him in such a stupor that he was simply ‘out of it’ 24/7. Also, as his disease progressed, he had zero appetite and could barely eat.
Out of desperation to find a way to stimulate his appetite so he wouldn’t starve to death before the cancer killed him, I started giving him pot – in ghee butter, brownies, and yes, by smoking. He immediately starting eating again, his anxiety went down about 90%, and he became alert enough to have quality interaction with his family and friends throughout what turned out to be the last year of his life.
I raised four children and throughout their teen years, they and their friends regularly confided in me about many topics, including drugs. Not a single one of them obtained marijuana from their parents, because EVERY drug imaginable was readily available and affordable through school friends – there was simply no need to risk stealing pot from home. As a baby boomer I have been around people hundreds of times who were stoned to the point where their driving could have been compromised, but the last thing any of them wanted to do was to get up and go anywhere!
Anyone who uses pot and then moves onto other drugs would have eventually tried them anyway – with or without pot. In fact, most people who start using pot have also already consumed alcohol, but there is no attempt to outlaw booze because consumers and the liquor industry would both fight that tooth and nail.
The bias against the legalization of pot stems primarily from outdated, incorrect and illogical beliefs about it (Remember being shown Reefer Madness when you were young? It’s one of the funniest films EVER!). Behind the scenes, Big Pharma fights against legalization because if it was legalized, the demand for many pharmaceuticals would drop, and as a natural substance, Marijuana can’t be patented so there is no profit potential in it. The bottom line is that we cannot continue outlawing things that benefit many because of the potential for abuse by a few.