Protect kids from new pot laws

Legalizing marijuana is the right thing to do, but we must ensure that our children don’t become victims in the process

All of us on the front lines of youth mental health and well-being know too well the disastrous results of frequent marijuana usage by kids, writes Calvin White.  (KENZO TRIBOUILLARD / AFP/GETTY IMAGES)  

By Calvin White

Of course, marijuana will be legalized. Only the misplaced morality of our previous Conservative government was impeding the logic that crime will be lessened, tax largesse will be increased, and consumer rights will finally be recognized. How could any reasonable person argue that alcohol should be legal but marijuana not? 

However, legalization does raise a tricky issue with which we have a responsibility to grapple. Kids and marijuana.

All of us on the front lines of youth mental health and well-being know too well the disastrous results of frequent marijuana usage by kids. Young habitual users are usually less present, less motivated to excel, less comfortable with their natural state, and less able to create meaningful engagement with peers and studies. We know it is not the same as the toking of past generations. 

Scientific analysis shows how, in current strains, the THC potency is tenfold higher and the anti-psychotic chemical component has been eliminated. This means the potential for pot to lead to psychosis is a clear and present danger for our kids and their developing brains.

This is not to say that a teenager who smokes marijuana once in a while is at significant risk. There is not the research to determine what frequency or duration is safe or not safe. Yet, if we look into who smokes and why, there is a frightening pattern. 

Too many teens are smoking it every day or several times a week. They are, for all intents and purposes, addicted. They use it to go to sleep, to take the edge off stress or boredom at school, and to create amiable socialization with peers. They use it in order to not feel what they would feel if they did not use it. In short, for so many kids, being high feels better than not being high. 

So why wouldn’t kids practise that form of “self-care”? We shouldn’t denigrate them for it. It makes perfect sense.

Getting stoned also fills the need to rebel and to enact one's own independence, which are natural to the teenage stage of life. These kids mistakenly believe they are in control.

This is why it is so extremely difficult to convince a teen to stop using. Added to the challenge is the ubiquitous wink of approval that marijuana gets from the media and the adult world. 

The silly “police oriented” admonition that it is a gateway drug long ago revealed itself as a total scam since kids grow up with parents and parents' friends who toke up. For years, political platforms have discounted any risks.

Thus, it is essential that we begin to see the legalization of marijuana not as a moral issue but as a perilous public health issue. Once the laws change, the message will irrevocably be that marijuana is just fine and the sliver of hesitation caused by its illegality will be gone. There is every reason to assume that usage by children will increase. We will see more mental illness in their ranks.

The normalization of being stoned or under the influence will be entrenched with the sad consequence that growing up will be impaired. 

What does that mean? It means that rather than a kid going through the natural process of ups and downs, learning to cope or adapt or bounce back as realities fluctuate, and through those experiences developing a firm and knowing relationship with their true self, they will instead be chemically insulating and moving through reality within that shroud. Instead of developing confidence in the relationship between their true selves and empirical reality, they will be learning dependence on something external that they must ingest in order to make it. How sad.

Adults dictate what happens in the world. In their wilfulness to cater to their own wants, they inevitably ignore, deny or minimize the effects of their choices on their children. 

When it comes down to it, we adults want what we want and we prioritize our right to have it. We will legalize marijuana because it makes sense to us and in the process we will give lip service to protecting our kids. 

But will we take the latter seriously by creating and funding widespread, comprehensive educational and intervention programs? And, if not, will we accept our responsibility when we discover the consequences that arise?