13 fast-food joints, 38 dope stores. Is this the high street of the future?
AMERICA’S appetite for fast food and coffee is wellknown, but the residents of Pueblo in Colorado have almost three times as many marijuana stores as branches of McDonald’s and Starbucks combined.
The 38 ‘high street’ stores selling marijuana already dwarf the 13 selling either Big Macs or lattes – and the number is soon expected to overtake the town’s 46 bars.
Unease about cannabis deepened when parents discovered that Pueblo’s schools were being flooded with marijuana-laced sweets.
Two years ago, doctors held a press conference to call on the city’s council to ban marijuana shops, but a vote on the proposal was defeated. Among those speaking out was paediatrician Dr Steven Simerville who claimed that between seven and ten per cent of newborn babies in the city were testing positive for THC, the main psychoactive constituent of cannabis.
While data about the effects of the legislation – and commercialisation – of cannabis across America is limited, Dr Simerville’s concerns are shared by many in the medical world.
Deepak D’Souza, Professor of Psychiatry at Yale University, said business was poised to cash in on an industry already worth $9billion (£6.8billion) in the US. ‘What is the purpose of these companies to commercialise this? To sell as much product as possible.’
Colorado was one of the first states to legalise marijuana for recreational use and adverse effects are beginning to emerge.
A study from the Children’s Hospital Colorado and A&E departments in its network found visits due to cannabis had risen from 146 in 2005 to 639 in 2015.
There is also growing evidence of the potential ill-effects of the drug on mental health. One study, from RTI International, a US non-profit organisation which researches tobacco and drug use, found that the use of medicinal marijuana had caused a two per cent increase in the prevalence of serious mental health issues.
The study, published in the International Review Of Psychiatry, said: ‘Prevalence of serious mental illness still remained significantly higher in states with liberal medical marijuana laws than in states without legal marijuana.’
Such statistics have not dampened enthusiasm for the drug. Colorado’s tax revenue from the trade last year was $247million from $1.5 billion of sales.
The windfall offers no comfort to Lori Robinson, whose son Shane, 25, committed suicide at their family cabin near Yosemite National Park in 2012.
He began smoking cannabis in his teens and later used medicinal marijuana in California, where he had moved and where it was legal.
Mrs Robinson, the founder of campaign group Moms Strong, said: ‘When you start legalising drugs – and marijuana is a drug – you start normalising drug use.’