Pubdate: Sun, 22 Mar 2015
Source: Gazette, The (Colorado Springs, CO)
Copyright: 2015 The Gazette
Contact: http://www.gazette.com/sections/opinion/submitletter/
Website: http://www.gazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/165
Authors: Pula Davis, Wayne Laugesen, Christine Tatum

STATE PREVENTION EFFORTS CRITICIZED

In one of the neatly maintained, brick buildings lining a street on 
the campus of the Colorado Mental Health Institute at Fort Logan in 
southwest Denver is a hive of offices where about 60 state employees 
focus on the prevention and treatment of mental health problems, 
including substance abuse and addiction.

Their work in the Office of Behavioral Health is cut out for them in 
Colorado, home to some of the highest drug-use rates in the nation 
and one of the country's worst track records for public funding of 
mental health care, especially for youths. The state almost entirely 
bankrolls the office's efforts to prevent substance abuse and 
addiction with an $8.3 million federal grant.

How much did Colorado budget in fiscal 2014-15 for the office's 
substance prevention work? About $34,000.

"Let's just say this state talks a good game about wanting to prevent 
problems but ultimately aligns its priorities much more closely with 
the interests of industries whose profits come from addiction and use 
of a harmful drug," said Bob Doyle, executive director of the 
Colorado Tobacco Education and Prevention Alliance and chairman of 
Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a policy group opposed to marijuana 
legalization.

"It is especially obvious that the state of Colorado is prioritizing 
marijuana and the marijuana industry over public health and welfare 
and basically ignoring many effective prevention strategies and 
professionals," he said.

Money funds messages

Indeed, the Office of Behavioral Health, which is the only state 
office specifically charged by statute with the development, 
coordination, supervision and evaluation of statewide efforts to 
prevent drug abuse and addiction, hasn't received a dollar this 
fiscal year to support efforts aimed at preventing marijuana use.

Instead, money for marijuana prevention and education initiatives has 
been channeled to the Governor's Office of Marijuana Coordination and 
to the Prevention Services Division of the Colorado Department of 
Public Health and Environment, which provides information on its 
website about "marijuana and your health" under the heading "Retail 
Marijuana" - the state's preferred term for recreational marijuana.

Unlike the OBH, where every staff member is a certified prevention 
specialist holding an internationally recognized credential, 
employees at the helm of Colorado's marijuana prevention and public 
education efforts have comparatively little training and work 
experience in substance prevention and issues related to substance 
treatment. None is a certified prevention specialist.

But there's a more important difference: Unlike these better-funded 
prevention groups, the OBH does not invite drug industry executives 
to help it develop and execute prevention strategies or lead 
community meetings.

"We have learned early on (in) substance abuse prevention from 
tobacco and alcohol that the industry has no place with direct 
prevention," said Stan Paprocki, who retired March 1 as the OBH's 
director of community prevention programs.

Paprocki has more than 28 years of professional experience in 
substance prevention and treatment and recently wrapped up 
supervision of a federally funded, five-year, $11 million campaign 
aimed at reducing underage alcohol consumption, especially among 
Latino youths, in Adams, Denver, Pueblo and Weld counties. The OBH's 
work was so effective that it met its five-year goal to reduce binge 
drinking among Latino youths in three years.

Paprocki said it didn't occur to him or his colleagues to ask alcohol 
industry executives to consult on the campaign.

But working with marijuana industry executives has been a consistent 
method employed by the CDPHE and governor's office when developing 
prevention and public awareness campaigns. The latter issued this 
edict when searching for a creative team to produce its three-week, 
$2 million "Don't Be a Lab Rat" campaign: "Offerer will demonstrate 
ability to navigate and thoughtfully address the potential of 
involving representatives from the pharmaceutical and marijuana 
industry as part of a collaborative effort toward a successful campaign."

Promotion or prevention?

The resulting initiative was developed with input from marijuana 
industry representatives and from health care providers who urged 
state officials to distance themselves and the work from industry 
involvement. They presented state officials with published, 
peer-reviewed studies showing that industry involvement in prevention 
campaigns has been associated with increased substance use rates.

"We know what works. We know that media working with interventions 
that change environments and speak to personal drug use prevent use. 
But that's not what industry wants to do," said Harold Holder, a 
world-recognized researcher in substance prevention science and the 
former director of the Prevention Research Center of the Pacific 
Institute for Research and Evaluation.

One element of the campaign was a 30-second video focused on teens 
getting high in a car. The spot has no voiceover. Viewers instead 
must read a brief message alluding to debated brain research that is 
transposed over footage of youths who appear to be having a great 
time as they smoke pot.

"It was all just so stupid because there was no clear prevention 
messaging," said William Crano, a professor of psychology at 
Claremont Graduate University in California who specializes in the 
development of media to support scientific, evidence-based drug 
prevention initiatives.

Crano knows a thing or two about angering bureaucrats who develop 
anti-drug messaging without full regard for its effectiveness. He was 
an early and outspoken critic of the federal government's memorable - 
but ineffective - "This Is Your Brain On Drugs" campaign of the 1980s.

"I quickly became a pariah with our Office of National Drug Control 
Policy and the drug czar," Crano said with a laugh. "But what I care 
about is effective messaging that changes behaviors and attitudes to 
prevent drug use."

Research shows effective drug prevention campaigns are not made up 
only of media, such as websites, billboards and television 
commercials. Successful campaigns also include an array of regular 
and consistent education carefully developed for specific audiences 
and community interventions that limit access to, and availability 
of, a substance in various ways, including price, Crano said.

He has even sharper words for Colorado's recently released "Good to 
Know" campaign - which also was crafted with significant input from 
marijuana business owners.

Supervised by the Colorado Department of Public Health and 
Environment, "Good to Know" so far is telling people not to avoid 
marijuana use but, rather, to use the drug responsibly. The tactic 
mirrors the alcohol industry-driven "Drink Responsibly" campaigns 
that have been shown to increase alcohol use, Crano said.

"It's an old and dirty trick the alcohol industry loves - and pays 
many millions of dollars for because it's obviously working for their 
bottom line," he said

"The message isn't prevention; it's about creating acceptance of 
alcohol use, which drives up sales. So, Colorado isn't preventing 
marijuana use. It's now in the business of promoting it."

Many of the state's addiction treatment providers, substance 
prevention professionals and advocates working in their communities 
to reduce drug use and abuse also say the CDPHE and the Governor's 
Office of Marijuana Coordination have given marijuana industry 
representatives too much influence. Among them is Jo McGuire, a 
Colorado Springs-based consultant who specializes in helping 
employers maintain drug-free workplace policies and serves on the 
national board of the Drug and Alcohol Testing Industry Association. 
"It's like inviting Philip Morris executives to help us learn how to 
use tobacco and develop our next anti-smoking campaign." - Jo 
McGuire, Colorado Springs consultant specializing in helping 
employers maintain drug-free workplace policies and a member of the 
National Board of the Drug and Alcohol Testing Industry Association

In August, McGuire attended a CDPHE event headlined "Marijuana 
Workshop for State and Local Public Health," during which a lawyer 
for the marijuana industry and a physician who recommends marijuana 
spoke. She was particularly surprised by the bud tender who lectured 
the safe, regular use of highly potent THC concentrates.

"None of what these marijuana-industry representatives said was 
supported by one shred of responsible science, and it was absolutely 
stunning to me that our state health officials gave these people such 
a place of authority and legitimacy," she said.

"It's one thing if CDPHE officials want to better understand the 
industry by meeting with people and taking their own notes, but it is 
very much another and beyond ridiculous for them to make marijuana 
industry leaders keynote speakers who get to dominate the floor and 
drive the agenda.

"It's like inviting Philip Morris executives to help us learn how to 
use tobacco and develop our next anti-smoking campaign."

[sidebar]

Day 1: REGULATION

Two important assumptions about successful legalization of marijuana 
in Colorado were:

1.) Regulation would provide a safer solution to the state's drug problems.

2.) By regulating the sale of marijuana the state could make money 
otherwise locked up in the black market.

Today's stories suggest the net gain from taxes and fees related to 
marijuana sales will not be known for a while, as costs are not known 
or tracked well, and there are many other unknowns about pot's 
effects on public health and safety.

About the series

After the first year of recreational pot sales, The Gazette takes a 
comprehensive look at the unintended consequences of legalizing sales 
and use of recreational marijuana.

Day 1: Colorado has a fragile scheme for regulating legal marijuana 
and implementing a state drug prevention strategy.

Day 2: One of the suppositions about legalizing pot was that 
underground sales would be curtailed, but officials say there is 
evidence of a thriving black market.

Day 3: One teen's struggle to overcome his marijuana addiction shows 
how devastating the effects of the drug can be for younger, more 
vulnerable users.

Day 4: Amid the hoopla about recreational marijuana sales, the 
medical marijuana industry is flourishing and has its own set of 
complicated concerns.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom