Get Active Subscribe Support Us

LEGAL OR NOT, DANGERS OF POT SHOULDN'T BE MINIMIZED

Let Colorado have legal pot.  Kansas can sit back and watch how this experiment goes and wait for more science on the health and societal impact of marijuana use.

I attended a public awareness meeting about marijuana in Hutchinson on Tuesday night.  Even though The Hutchinson News was a sponsor, I thought I might confirm my past support for legalizing pot.  It must have been an effective program, as I walked away instead in support of the people who are fighting pot usage, especially at the youth level.  I have too much respect for those people to marginalize pot.  Downplaying the effects of pot is exactly why it is a problem with our youth and in our schools.

The case for legalizing pot has been that it isn't any worse than alcohol, which is legal, and law enforcement resources could be better directed to more serious drugs such as methamphetamine.  Plus, taxing legal marijuana would provide a good tax revenue stream for government, just as similar taxes on alcohol and tobacco.

But no matter what you think about adult pot usage, we all should agree that it isn't something our children should be doing.  Hutchinson High School students David Sotelo and Anna Kimmel testified to the "nonchalant" attitude toward marijuana in their school.  Sotelo showed a video in which fellow students expressed as much and shared how easy the drug is to obtain in the school.  Marijuana use at the high school level in Hutchinson is estimated at more than 30 percent.  And I know from the stories from school told in my own home that pot is prevalent in Hutchinson public schools and little is done to control it.  A baggie of weed found in a desk of a classroom, pot in the bathroom, students behind a campus building smoking pot during break: No wonder kids are immune to marijuana's presence.

One reason I've questioned the wisdom of continued criminalization of marijuana is the allocation of resources to minor pot possession when methamphetamine manufacture, sale and use is such a far more insidious problem.  But seasoned prosecutor Tom Stanton explained that, contrary to popular belief, people convicted of simple possession of marijuana don't take up space in our prisons.  And judging by the presence of law enforcement and prosecutors at the marijuana awareness meeting, they aren't ready to give up fighting it around here.

It's a gateway drug, they say, and one former drug abuser testified to that at the forum.  It may be no more of a gateway to more addictive drugs than alcohol, but, as Reno County District Judge Joe McCarville said to me, if the best that can be said about marijuana is that it's no worse than alcohol, that's not good.  We have a drinking age because we don't think alcohol is a wise choice for youth either.  McCarville's is an opinion I respect.  He's not only got the perspective of a judge but as a founder of the local drug court, an intensive treatment and rehabilitation program for drug addicts that provides an alternative to prison - a new approach that is working.  Marijuana might not be any more dangerous than alcohol - though more study needs to be done on that - but that doesn't mean it is time to legalize pot.  Prohibition was tried and failed with alcohol.  We won't go back on alcohol.  But we don't need to go down the legalization road with marijuana in Kansas.

And marijuana poses other complications that alcohol does not.  Even if it were legal, driving while under the influence wouldn't be .  But the marijuana chemical can't be detected by a breath test; it requires a blood test.  The same would be true at a school event where administrators are monitoring students for being under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

Colorado is working through these and other issues.  Let the Rocky Mountain State blaze the trail.  The politics of legalizing pot - whether for medicinal or recreational use - wasn't the point of the Hutchinson forum.  The focus was on youth, and the takeaway was that marijuana is not harmless and any impression to the contrary should not be left to our young population.

The message to our youth needs to be clear: Marijuana is dangerous.  Alcohol is dangerous.  They're both illegal for minors to use.  It isn't healthy to use them.