Editor’s note: This commentary is by Julia Purdy, of Rutland Town, a copy editor, freelance writer and retired educator. This is an open letter to the Vermont Legislature.
To Vermont legislators:
[I]f you have not studied the latest report, “The Legalization of Marijuana in Colorado: the Impact, Vol. 4” issued in September 2016 by the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (RMHIDTA), now is the time. RMHIDTA is charged at the federal level with documenting both illegal — and now legal — drug activity.
The RMHIDTA has been tracking Colorado’s experience with cannabis since 2009. The report was produced by the strategic intelligence unit of the RMHIDTA Investigative Support Center. It compiles data from previous RMHIDTA reports as well as documented accounts of all aspects of marijuana for early 2016.
Every law and/or bill to date has promised to prevent access of the drug by children, similar to alcoholic beverages and tobacco (in Colorado the legal age is 21). So, what does this report have to say?
“Section 2: Youth Marijuana Use” studies the impact on and use by school-age children since the introduction of medical marijuana, but particularly since recreational marijuana became legal for adults in 2012. The data generally refers to “current use,” that is within the past 30 days. It details the failure of legalization (and therefore regulation) to keep marijuana away from children, with sobering results.
In fact, youth use has increased steadily since pre-medical marijuana days. The University of Colorado’s biennial Healthy Kids Colorado Survey, which interviewed approximately 17,000 randomly selected students from more than 157 middle schools and high schools in 2015, shows a 7.6 percent increase in student marijuana use from 2013 (19.7 percent) to 2015 (21.2 percent).
In school year 2015-2016, 62 percent of all drug-related suspensions, 58 percent of all drug-related expulsions, and 73 percent of all drug-related referrals to law enforcement were related to marijuana violations.
School dropouts were tallied at 11,114 for school year 2014-2015, up by 5 percent over school year 2013-2014.
If anything, the drug has become more attractive and “cool” to children, not only because they believe that legalization is a signal that the drug is safe, but because their parents and older siblings now freely share the drug with them in the home.
If anything, the drug has become more attractive and “cool” to children, not only because they believe that legalization is a signal that the drug is safe, but because their parents and older siblings now freely share the drug with them in the home.
In June 2016, RMHIDTA interviewed 103 school resource officers (police officers detailed to schools with an average of six years’ tenure in the schools). Eighty-two percent of the officers reported an increase in marijuana activity among students on school grounds; 12 percent reported no change from the previous school year; and 6 percent reported a decrease in marijuana activity. including bringing edibles to school, sharing or selling marijuana to other students, Forty-five percent reported students being stoned in school; 43 percent reporting students possessing marijuana during school hours; 7 percent reported students possessing edibles; and 2 percent each reported sharing or selling to other students.
When asked where the students were getting the drug, school resource officers reported that about 45 percent get it from their friends who can get it legally; 22 percent from their parents; 24 percent on the black market; 6 percent from medical marijuana dispensaries; 2 percent from retail outlets; and 1 percent from medical marijuana cardholders.
Statements by SROs include the observation that marijuana enjoys broad acceptance in schoolchildren and they have a number of ways to get and use it, including ordering it on Facebook. Among the anecdotal evidence: “8th grade kid high at school he and 6th grade sister both smoke marijuana at home with parents while watching TV at night. Parents also let both eat marijuana edibles that parents make.” An officer who has taught the D.A.R.E. to Keep Kids Off Drugs curriculum for the past 20 years said that elementary school students now “are more vocal in defending the useful purpose and benefits of marijuana.” Another officer questioned a pair of brothers who were stoned at school. They told him that their dad, who holds a medical marijuana card, “was having them both smoke a bowl before school. He thought it would make their school day easier.”
The Colorado School Counselor Association declined to participate in the 2016 survey, but in 2015, 188 Colorado school counselors were interviewed and reported similar observations. Students arrive in the morning or come back from lunch openly stoned. The counselors reported that the attitude among students is that it’s fine because it’s legal, and it’s “not a drug, it’s just a plant.” In the words of a school superintendent, “I didn’t think [legalization] would affect things any more than alcohol does, but we’ve been impacted more than we thought. Because of the fact that [marijuana] is now legal, it’s viewed differently by kids. … It’s the availability and overall mindset that leads to problems.”
The 2015 RMHIDTA report on student marijuana use includes a definitive study by Dr. Muiris Houston in Lancet Psychiatry that finds that daily users of marijuana under age 17 are 60 percent more likely to drop out of high school or quit college without getting a degree, that the same demographic is seven times more likely to commit suicide, and eight times more likely to move on to other drugs later on. A number of other sources are quoted in the report for easy reference by those concerned about the health effects on young people.
Finally, the 2015 report quotes an article in Clinical Pediatrics (June 10, 2015), which found that young children under the age of 6 are increasingly exposed to marijuana nationwide, and that these children in states where marijuana is legal “face significantly elevated risks of exposure and poisoning.”
The marijuana in the market today is not your grandfather’s marijuana. High-tech methods of extracting, processing and genetically modifying THC are producing a drug as much as 10 times more potent than the home-grown joint. The effect on the individual user can vary from mild to a near psychotic episode, especially with vulnerable children, many of whom have required hospitalization.
