Pubdate: Tue, 25 Sep 2012
Source: Fort Collins Coloradoan (CO)
Copyright: 2012 The Fort Collins Coloradoan
Contact: http://www.coloradoan.com/customerservice/contactus.html
Website: http://www.coloradoan.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1580
Author: John Clarke
Note: John Clarke is a former county commissioner, former City 
Council member, photographer and 600 KCOL host. His column appears on 
the last Tuesday of every month.

MEDICAL MARIJUANA IS BAD PUBLIC POLICY

I recently found myself working just outside the city limits of Fort 
Collins, across the street from a medical marijuana shop.

Most of their customers are healthy looking young men who appear to 
be about 18 to 30 years old. According to the medical marijuana 
boosters, these guys are supposed to be in perpetual pain and the 
only remedy is to smoke a joint. Among the steady stream of 
"patients" who ebb and flow from the place, nobody has handicap 
license plates, uses a walker, or exhibits any kind of physical 
ailment - several come on bicycles.

When the citizens of Fort Collins voted to outlaw medical marijuana 
businesses, the shops in the county (in some cases only a few blocks 
from the city boundaries) continued to operate. Now, we are going to 
vote again in November on two marijuana-related issues - whether to 
allow these establishments back into Fort Collins and whether to 
legalize the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana in Colorado.

While those who proposed these ballot issues try to convince you that 
marijuana is as pure as mother's milk and has no significant negative 
impacts on its users or the public, the evidence is mounting that 
marijuana (THC) intoxication greatly increases the risk of auto 
accidents, and contributes to crime.

According to the Los Angeles Times, a 2009 white paper from the 
California Police Chiefs Association states that "marijuana 
dispensaries are commonly large money-making enterprises that will 
sell marijuana to most anyone. ... Because they are repositories of 
valuable marijuana crops and large amounts of cash, several operators 
of dispensaries have been attacked and murdered by armed robbers both 
at their storefronts and homes, and such places have been regularly 
burglarized."

The Times further points out that, according to California Highway 
Patrol data, nearly 1,000 deaths and injuries each year are blamed 
directly on drugged drivers and law enforcement puts much of the 
blame on the rapid growth of medical marijuana use in the past 
decade. Fatalities in crashes where drugs were the primary cause 
(excluding alcohol) jumped 55 percent during the 10 years ending in 2009.

A report from the National Institute on Drug Abuse published in 
December 2010 says: "THC affects areas of the brain that control the 
body's movements, balance, coordination, memory, and judgment, as 
well as sensations."

Research done at The University of Adelaide in Australia says: "A 
meta-analysis of approximately 60 experimental studies - including 
laboratory, driving simulator, and on-road experiments - found that 
behavioral and cognitive skills related to driving performance were 
impaired in a dose-dependent fashion with increasing THC blood 
levels. Evidence from both real and simulated driving studies 
indicates that marijuana can negatively affect a driver's 
attentiveness, perception of time and speed, and ability to draw on 
information obtained from past experiences."

Canadian researchers conclude that people who smoke marijuana within 
three hours of driving are nearly twice as likely to get in a serious 
car crash. The research included nine observational studies, with a 
sample size of nearly 50,000 accident victims and was published in 
the British Medical Journal.

Please vote no on the proposal to allow medical marijuana 
establishments in Fort Collins, and the state-wide constitutional 
amendment to legalize marijuana in Colorado. Both of these measures 
are bad public policy.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom