Kids don’t understand risks posed by marijuana

After Arizona voters agreed to legalize recreational marijuana, I received many phone calls and emails saying, “I’m sorry.”

I appreciated the sentiment, but the loss was not mine. It was Arizona’s. While I respect the will of the voters, I also know our state will not be a better place because people can legally get high on yet one more substance. A few companies will get richer, but Arizona will not.

At MATFORCE, our fervent wish is to prevent youth from ever beginning to use harmful substances. One thing I know for sure, the election results have made this more difficult to achieve.

Our nonprofit launched in 2005 in Prescott to battle the methamphetamine epidemic spreading misery across Arizona. Two years later we expanded our focus to all mind-altering substances. We emphasized the need for education and prevention, and it paid off in important ways.

Underage drinking in Yavapai County fell by 39% in a decade, according to the 2018 Arizona Youth Survey. Teen cigarette use fell by 44%, and prescription drug misuse fell 71%.

But teen use of marijuana rose by 48%.

Why the difference? A firm, consistent message warned about the dangers of tobacco, alcohol and prescription drug misuse. Teens really listen to adults — especially when we speak with a unified voice.

There has been no unified voice about marijuana. Social media portrays marijuana as fun and glamorous, the way movies once portrayed cigarette smoking. Voters decided pot was a medicine, and Big Marijuana trotted out the lie that cannabis is safer than alcohol. Not surprisingly after hearing these messages, nearly half of teens now see little or no risk in using marijuana regularly.

Now voters have ational marijuana.

Teens will react, sometimes deadly consequences.

Sixty percent of the 52 Yavapai County residents whose deaths were reviewed by the Overdose Fatality Review Board beginning in 2016 started using marijuana or alcohol at a young age. Already this year, six teens have died of a fentanyl overdose.

And so our challenge is to make sure parents realize the importance of talking frankly to their children.

Parents need the truth, facts and scientific evidence that too often is excluded from this debate. Because young brains are still developing (and using pot just once or twice changes them), marijuana has a more serious and longlasting effect on people who start using as teens.

Parents need the knowledge that marijuana has changed since they were young. The “flower” form is three to five times more potent that it was just 25 years ago, and distilled forms (vapes, wax, shatter) can reach 95% potency.

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High potency increases the risk of psychosis and addiction.

Communities, drivers and children need to be protected to the extent possible within the constraints of the Voter Protection Act.

I worry about the direction drug policy is moving in our country. Denver, Colo., Oakland and Santa Cruz, Calif., have decriminalized hallucinatory mushrooms. Oregon just decriminalized possession of small amounts of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and other hard drugs. I wonder what the end results of these policy changes will be.

Those who voted yes on Proposition 207 did so in good faith, in a belief that marijuana is harmless. But they have not seen what I have seen, and they have not walked in the shoes of mothers who buried children for whom marijuana had become a demon.

Will those voters feel the same way in a decade?