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. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom