Pubdate: Tue, 22 Apr 2014
Source: Columbus Dispatch (OH)
Copyright: 2014 The Columbus Dispatch
Contact:  http://www.dispatch.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/93
Note: - Bloomberg View

LEGALIZERS IGNORE POT'S DANGERS

Marijuana has now been legalized or decriminalized in 17 states and
the District of Columbia, with Maryland joining the list just last
week.

What's unhealthy about this trend is that it coincides with a
declining awareness of marijuana's dangers - especially among young
people. Fewer than 40 percent of high-school seniors think marijuana
use poses a great risk, down from 55 percent in 2003. Cigarettes are
dangerous, more and more adolescents have come to realize, but they
don't believe marijuana is. (In fact, they're both unhealthy.)

That they could be so wrong about a drug that more than a third have
used makes it clear: In their drive to roll back laws against
marijuana, and for the revenue that undoing prohibition would raise,
states are inadvertently stoking a serious public-health problem.

Marijuana poses the greatest threat to the still-developing brains of
teenagers. Steady use can bring lasting impairments in memory,
intellectual functioning and emotion control. Marijuana use has been
linked to depression, anxiety, even psychosis. Smoking pot once a week
or more appears to actually change the size and shape of certain brain
regions in young people.

Dependence is a special problem, not limited to adolescents but more
prevalent among them: One in 6 teenagers become addicted to marijuana,
according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (the comparable
figure for adults is 1 in 11). With dependence comes every sort of
social trouble: isolation, failure at school and work, often profound
unhappiness.

There are other effects, equally disturbing. Smoking pot is bad for
the lungs. It slows reaction time (fatal car accidents involving
drivers testing positive for marijuana tripled in the U.S. from 1999
to 2010). Pot use during pregnancy can harm the fetal brain, and there
remain unanswered questions about how marijuana affects adult and
geriatric brains.

When marijuana use was illegal, fears about these effects were
circumscribed. Legalization both eliminates the possibility of
penalty, encouraging many more people to try marijuana, and lowers the
price, making it easier for everyday users to keep their habit going.

Both Colorado and Washington, the two states that have legalized
marijuana for adults, have rules to keep minors away from it. Sales to
them are punishable by steep fines and jail terms. Nevertheless, more
teenagers in these states are expected to use marijuana than did
before it was legalized.

Such restrictions are essential, but they do nothing to educate kids
or their parents about the risks marijuana poses to still-growing
brains, or to inform adult users about the dangers of overuse. The
states should direct tax revenue from marijuana sales toward
public-education campaigns.

As with all sin taxes, states will have to balance the competing goals
of raising revenue and affecting behavior. It is not hypocritical to
use money from taxing a product to discourage its use; states do it
now with cigarettes and alcohol, for example.

As states make it easier for the public to get marijuana, they are
obligated to protect the public from its harms.  
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D