The real dilemma of recreational marijuana

By William Garr

Citizens in Massachusetts will make a decision in November that could profoundly affect our culture and, potentially, the welfare of future generations. The prospect of legalizing the use of recreational marijuana has left many of us scratching our heads.

Proponents talk about decriminalizing the use and growing of marijuana yet we decimalized the possession of an ounce of marijuana in 2008. They rationalize that the increased revenue generated by taxing legal marijuana would pay for additional treatment and support services.

Most health-care and government officials agree, however, that the income generated would be "vastly insufficient" to cover the current or future gaps in treatment and needed programs.

It's also difficult to imagine how we can control the quality and contents of marijuana when people will be allowed to grow (and quietly market) their own plants. For many of us, there's just something uncomfortable about using drugs without an official medicinal purpose for pure enjoyment.

Do we really know what the short and long-term effects of regular marijuana use are on the brain? Will legalizing marijuana open the floodgates for the use of other potentially harmful and highly addictive drugs? There are so many unanswered questions.

There is, however, a place where the legalization of recreational use of marijuana should never be questioned -- the potential effect on our youngest and most vulnerable citizens.

The evidence is overwhelming against increasing the availability of cheap and easily accessible marijuana to our pre-teens and adolescents.


Consider the facts. In the National Institute of Drug Abuse's (NIDA) annual national survey of school-age children, 68 percent of high school seniors felt that use of marijuana is not harmful, and over 21 percent said they used it in some form at least once a month.

NIDA research indicates that the very roots of long-term addiction lie in the early use of drugs like marijuana. Recent studies indicate that teens who use marijuana on a regular monthly basis can be as much as 40 percent more likely to develop a lifetime addiction to a substance. In fact, young people who don't experience regular drug use before the age of 21 years have a far smaller chance of addiction later in life.

And here are a few myth busters -- marijuana can be addictive, people do overdose on marijuana, and it contains as much as 20 times the active drug (THC) than the "weed" of the '60s and '70s.

Consider the Colorado experience if you assume legal marijuana will be safely protected behind store counters. Marijuana is directly marketed to teens with offerings of marijuana laced pop-tarts, gummy bears and Nutella throughout the state.

And if you think it will be well regulated, you should be aware that Denver had to place a ban on new marijuana stores after the sheer numbers of new marijuana outlets, especially stores in vulnerable low-income areas, made careful monitoring nearly impossible.

Colorado also now has the highest rate of marijuana use among teens in the country according to a recent national drug use survey.

Put aside the facts that marijuana is a dangerous and potentially addictive gateway drug and just consider the most important issue: Do we want our children to have parental models "toking" up regularly on non-medicinal drugs? This has the real chance of making our opioid crisis a national disaster that may be impossible to reverse.

Vote for the current status quo, vote "no" on the November ballot Question No. 4 to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. Don't allow a difficult problem to become a statewide tragedy.