There has been much written in recent weeks about marijuana legalization.
As a result, there seems to be much confusion and misinformation over the legalization issue. We believe it is important for people, especially parents, to understand what is at the heart of this critical issue.
It’s not about marijuana as medicine – medical marijuana is already approved in Maryland. It’s also not just about an individual wanting to smoke pot in the privacy of their home.
It is about “Big Marijuana” (like Big alcohol and big tobacco) wanting to sell addictive products to the most vulnerable in our society – our youth, mentally ill, poor, and minorities. It’s about massive advertising and promotion of marijuana to encourage, not just allow, smoking marijuana. It’s about other marijuana products like pot tarts, lolipots, marijuana cookies, brownies, candy and sodas targeting our youth to build sales and getting people hooked.
Legalization of marijuana as now exists in Colorado and soon will in Washington State encourage marijuana use. Legalization also encourages commercialization of manufacture, sale and promotion of marijuana all of which is contrary to the public interest. Wider use of marijuana will increase serious health and safety problems including adversely affecting education and work and threatening highway safety.
Much of the marijuana on the market today has a higher concentration of THC than it ever has in the past. In many cases, a person can get high from one or two inhalations. Today’s marijuana products, including recreational marijuana drinks and edibles, contain THC concentrations that can be 50-70 times higher than a traditional joint. Marijuana wax, the ultimate distillation of marijuana, is so potent that it is said a single hit will keep a person high for more than a day.
Addictive drugs create substantial, often lifelong, health problems for large percentages of the users of these drugs. Marijuana is far from harmless; in fact, recent scientific findings about the drug are startling. Most of the drug treatment for young people in the United States is for marijuana alone. Marijuana emergency-room mentions have skyrocketed over the past decade, and the drug is associated with an increased risk of developing schizophrenia, even when personality traits and pre-existing conditions are taken into account
For further information on the dangers of marijuana and other drugs, contact Talbot Partnership at 410-819-8067 or [email protected]. Please also visit our website at www.talbotpartnership.org or find us on Facebook.
Bennett Price says
Editor,
No sources cited but plenty of BS. Who is big marijuana? Who is targeting kids? Marijuana is addictive? One hit of wax gets you high for over a day? Use will increase serious health and safety problems? The mentally ill are being targeted?!?! I feel like I could quote this whole article and ask What The Hell? Where is any of this ‘information’ coming from? Name a study, a researcher, any statistical data that can be verified. Have emergency room visits related to smoking pot increased in CO? Was ANY actual research done before this was written? This is such rubbish it’s mind blowing. Seriously who writes this poorly. This article is targeting the gullible. Love the Spy, hate this particular piece of garbage.
Matthew Douglas Hogans Jr. says
Editor,
I am having trouble knowing how to start this letter. It would be easiest for me to pick the low hanging fruit, which in this case would be to methodically disassemble this writer’s pedantic comparisons between the industrialized economies of alcohol / tobacco and the (as of now) non-existent, and entirely hypothetical business of selling marijuana for recreational purposes within the congressionally mandated oversight of the federal government. Instead I’m going to take the high road and offer my personal opinion, based on personal experience, which in this case I feel is far more deserving of the attention of the parents who would theoretically read this ‘piece.’ I am also a parent.
Marijuana is not the enemy. There is no such thing as an addiction to pot. There are many people who become addicted to relieving the all too common frustrations and idiosyncrasies of modern life or their own crippling issues with addiction with marijuana, but these people will often choose any form of substance relief. In my personal experience the specific preferences of self medicating individuals are, in most cases, contextually based and hard to verbally identify outside a common lexicon. Essentially it is folly, as a mediating parent, to apply broad, sweeping generalizations to these kind of issues. Unfortunately this article only deals in exactly that. I certainly don’t want my daughter to smoke pot, but one day she will make her own decisions entirely outside of any measure of control I may have now. Hopefully one day she will choose to love the reality she was given, and thus love herself, but I believe that measure of understanding is hard won and fought for, and almost never simple.
Tess Hogans says
Editor,
This article is actually pretty dangerous in spreading rumors about the ‘truth’ of how much damage can be done by marijuana. Where are the facts to back this up? Seems pretty irresponsible to me. I like reading the Spy, but this is just silly.