2 weeks Ago
A growing cache of research underscores the harm marijuana can do to the mind and body, especially for kids. The public, particularly parents, is becoming ever more aware of those perils. A new wave of hard data and other sobering information has emerged since Colorado and other early-adopting states plunged into legalization, and it’s opening the public’s eyes.
It has provided a rude but needed awakening for parents. Many once waved off their kids’ marijuana use as youthful “experimentation.” Some no doubt also bought into the hype about legal retail pot shops providing tax revenue for public services.
Never mind that the sales-tax bonanza never materialized; what got parents’ attention was the brave new world of marijuana-spawned maladies like cannabis use disorder and its accompanying psychotic episodes. So, why hasn’t Colorado’s political establishment gotten the message? Plenty of our pols seem to have fallen way behind on the learning curve, almost oblivious to the grim realities of today’s high-potency pot and the alarming findings about its threat to kids. Ask Gov.
Jared Polis or Denver Mayor Mike Johnston about the dangers pot poses to our youth, and you are likely to get a scripted statement of confidence in Colorado’s state and local regulatory framework for marijuana sales, followed by an assertion that Colorado is a model for other states seeking to legalize. Even if such a response held merit — in reality, there are gaping holes in our pot regulations — it would miss the point. You’d think by now Colorado’s elected leaders would begin just about every public statement on pot with a reminder to parents how much harm it can do to their kids.
Instead, much of Colorado’s predominantly Democratic leadership — in thrall to the pot lobby and chained to their party’s soft-on-drugs dogma — spouts wishful truisms. As if whistling past the graveyard. Maybe that will change, at long last, with the publication of a deeply enlightening, landmark investigative report on marijuana’s dangers — by The New York Times.
It is getting the kind of wide exposure to which politicians are likely to tune in, and it comes from a news organization that commands their respect. The Times report sets aside the cutesy and comedic coverage marijuana often gets in a lot of national media — revealing instead the serious damage pot does to physical and mental health, including suicide-inducing psychotic breaks. The report exposes how millions of Americans are now addicted to a drug that supposedly has no addictive properties — and how fully 18 million users report symptoms of cannabis use disorder.
Some cases develop into what researchers have identified as cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome. While medical researchers already have been blowing the whistle on marijuana, many in politics haven’t been willing to listen. Perhaps now they will.
The Times is widely regarded as the flagship of U.S. print journalism.
Although it generally isn’t known for challenging the conventional wisdom of the political left, this time, the newspaper shifts tack. So, policymakers on the left will benefit all the more by reading the report. For some officeholders, it may even come as sort of a permission slip — freeing them up at last to express their own long-held but suppressed misgivings about marijuana’s impact on society.
The Times report was reprinted in The Gazette on Monday; Executive Editor Vince Bzdek also gives the report an engaging overview in his column this week. (See: https://denvergazette.com/politics/elections/is-colorado-paying-enough-attention-to-marijuanas-toll-vince-bzdek/article_918314a7-b7e8-5548-97f6-20656a81e6aa.
html ) Both are recommended reading — especially for our state’s elected leaders. the gazette editorial board.
