Pubdate: Wed, 18 Sep 2013
Source: Daily Sentinel, The (Grand Junction, CO)
Copyright: 2013 Cox Newspapers, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.gjsentinel.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2084
Author: Diane Cox
Note: Title by newshawk

SHINY NEW SCHOOLS

The Grand Junction City Council made a wise decision in joining Mesa 
County in just saying "no" to marijuana retail shops.

The tax revenues the drug dealers have promised to share with us to 
build "shiny new schools" won't benefit students whose brains have 
been fried on marijuana.

A 20-year study recently published and printed in The Daily Sentinel 
revealed that an average high school student smoking pot once a week 
for one year dropped his or her IQ from the 50th percentile down to the 29th.

This should not surprise us, since marijuana has been hybridized 
since the '70s from 1 percent THC levels (hallucinogens) to 30 
percent or more today.

Even Amsterdam classifies anything more than 15 percent as a hard drug.

Police Chief John Camper told the council that any behavior you 
normalize becomes more widespread. Sadly, we have seen this come true 
with the sharp increase in marijuana expulsions in Colorado high 
schools since medical marijuana dispensaries opened several years 
ago. The "strict" regulations for dispensaries did little to stem 
that, and neither will the new regulations.

Councilman Bennett Boechenstein said he was eager to see how it 
worked for Denver (the only city so far to allow retail shops) and to 
revisit the issue.

He might want to consider how it worked in Alaska after that state 
legalized pot in the 1970s and its teen drug abuse doubled in a few 
years. Voters had the good sense to reverse the law.

How can we continue social experiments with our most precious 
resource - our youth?

DIANE COX

Palisade
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom