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Does Marijuana legalization,

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  • PlaffelvohfenPlaffelvohfen 3985 Pts   -  
    @TKDB

    First, saying anyone is "pro illegal something" means that they want it to be illegal, so it would be you who are "pro illegal drugs"... I'm anti-prohibition because prohibition just doesn't work, never has and never will...

    Also, linking to sites where people's main argument is "We don't like it", is far from enough... It's like a young earth creationist linking to answersingenesis.org, or a racist linking to the official KKK page for arguments in favor of white supremacy... It's ridiculous... 
    " Adversus absurdum, contumaciter ac ridens! "
  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -  
    @Plaffelvohfen

    "I'm anti-prohibition because prohibition just doesn't work, never has and never will..."

    It does work, but the drug addicts abuse laws, just as they trouble themselves with their illegal drugs.

    Yeap, just as i figured, your answer, shows how much effort your fingers made, as they moved along your keyboard? 

    And this below mess of words from you, is laziness, it has nothing to do with this specific forum:

    "Also, linking to sites where people's main argument is "We don't like it", is far from enough... It's like a young earth creationist linking to answersingenesis.org, or a racist linking to the official KKK page for arguments in favor of white supremacy... It's ridiculous... " 

    Keep educating me, with your non efforts, Plaffelvohfen.

    Basically you're comfortable debating in this forum, but shy. to debate the authors of those articles? 

    That's the quiet answer, that I've gathered from the efforts of your response.


  • PlaffelvohfenPlaffelvohfen 3985 Pts   -  
    @TKDB

    I am trying to educate you, it just seems like you have some learning impairment or lack the ability to understand a simple issue... 

    Prohibition was such a failure that the 18th amendment (the one instituting prohibition) was repealed 13 years later, which makes it the only constitutional amendment in US history ever rescinded.... 

    Try again...
    " Adversus absurdum, contumaciter ac ridens! "
  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -  
    @Plaffelvohfen

    "I am trying to educate you, it just seems like you have some learning impairment or lack the ability to understand a simple issue... 

    Prohibition was such a failure that the 18th amendment (the one instituting prohibition) was repealed 13 years later, which makes it the only constitutional amendment in US history ever rescinded.... 

    Try again..."

    Below is my answer:

    There's nothing to fear, but your own fears, in regards to how you view certain laws, or IE prohibitions? 

    I asked you before, if you were anti law, and you said no.

    But a law, is basically a prohibition isnt it?

    So wouldn't that make you, an anti law individual, being that you're against any laws making the illegal drugs illegal, including marijuana? 

    Placing these websites at your fingertips:

    Why don't you reach out, and challenge the below websites, with your pro illegal drug philosophy? 

    https://calmca.org/

    "Citizens Against Legalizing Marijuana (CALM) is an all-volunteer Political Action Committee dedicated to defeating any effort to legalize marijuana."

     
    https://poppot.org/
     

    "LARGE NEW STUDY SHOWS TEEN CANNABIS USE RISK FOR LATER DEPRESSION"


    "HEADLINES BRING UP MORE MARIJUANA – RELATED BEHAVIORAL ISSUES"


    "MY 16-YEAR-OLD SON DIED FROM MARIJUANA"



    "By Gordon MacDougall, Ludington, Michigan  My heart is broken. I taught my son that peer pressure is dangerous and that action is never justified because someone else said it was “okay.”

    "How It Happened

    It was the evening of October 6, 2017 (homecoming night!). Henry was at the home of a 19-year-old young man, “dabbing”, which is the use of an inhaler to breathe marijuana into your system, making it extremely potent.

    This 19-year-old took videos of my son Henry both while he was dabbing and also after he passed out; he then let Henry get into his car to drive home. Apparently, Henry passed out again, only this time behind the wheel. Driving through a stop sign, he hit a semi-truck. He would die a few hours later. And my life has never been the same.

    You can imagine my agony as my state now faces a decision on the November ballot on whether or not to legalize the very drug that took my son. I implore Michigan voters: please vote no to legalizing recreational marijuana in Michigan."

    "Marijuana is Too Accessible

    When someone loses a child, you ask yourself, “how can I honor his legacy to make sure this never happens again to someone else’s child?”  Some people have said, “if it was legal it would mean less trouble in the world.” Those who make that argument are short-sighted, basing their rationale on their own desire and not on facts or responsible judgment.

    Medical marijuana is already legal in Michigan but its use is already being abused. This ballot initiative addresses recreational marijuana, allowing every adult in a home to have up to 12 plants. Can you imagine how accessible it will become to children?! In spite of parents’ best efforts, when a dangerous substance is that easily within reach (often cloaked in gummy bears and brownies), children and teenagers will find access. By making recreational marijuana legal – this will increase abuse on this dangerous drug, not curb danger.

    It is not helpful to point fingers at those who have lost someone and suggest we are to blame as parents. On top of poor choices, Henry made that night, this substance was way too accessible and acceptable to the people in this community.

    We must do all we can now and in the future to empower law enforcement and the justice system to address those who are using it irresponsibly in our communities. To make it legal, will make their jobs all the harder. Facts show that very few in Michigan are in prison because of marijuana use. Let’s not open the door to unnecessary problems like recreational marijuana flooding our streets and homes more than it already is. Please, as a state, let us NOT lift the regulations on a dangerous substance just to make it more convenient. Your children are too important to make recreational marijuana more accessible."

    "Redeeming the Future

    I know first hand that talking to those who are for legalizing recreational marijuana is a waste of time: one excuse leads to the next. I am not interested in rationales, or unsubstantiated claims. I lost my son because of his misuse of this terribly misrepresented drug. I am interested in truth and in protecting other parents from having to experience the pain I felt, and still feel.

    I would do anything to go back in time and keep my son from going to that house that fateful night. In the same way, I want to do all I can to keep the canary in the cage when it comes to legalizing this poison. Please share my story, tell your neighbors who are not aware, inform your churches and your social clubs, make sure the coaches and teachers are educated and make sure your teenagers know about my Henry and the dangerous drug that took his life.

    Together, we must tell others so we can be informed and responsible citizen voters on Tuesday, November 6, 2018. Please, Michigan – say NO to recreational marijuana before it’s too late."

    "FORMER NYT WRITER’S NEW BOOK WARNS OF MARIJUANA, VIOLENCE, MENTAL ILLNESS"


    "MARIJUANA IS THE COMMON WEB BETWEEN SO MANY MASS KILLERS"



    "WHY CANNABIS IS NOT A SOLUTION TO OPIOID CRISIS

    Addiction weighs you down, so marijuana can’t solve the opioid problem" 

  • @TKDB ;

    Plenty of articles, that you can reach out to, and challenge the individual authors, with your pro illegal philosophy, and debate them?  Why are you saying challenge them? Again, the civil argument is if malice is taking place when the President and governor’s as heads of state know criminals are killing people for control over the sale, territories, and collection of money of marijuana. This is not a specialized chemical compound set in patent right, it is a plant that can be grown. It is a plant that can be harvested with many applications outside human consumption. A civil debate is not the same as a criminal accusation before criminal court, the claim of an illegal Marijuana is not a statement of United State. There are legal forms already. The Judicial process is held in a United State, The United States Constitution, marijuana has been brought into a united state of War, the Drug War by its description as a narcotic. What is going to happen is the re-structuring of Institutionalizing Prisoners of War. The Drug War as an open interpretation associates’ the people who may just casually smoke or enjoy marijuana with those who will kill to for controlling money earned from Marijuana sales. You do know by introducing all these people with how marijuana harms people you are displaying an understanding of malice? Taking part in allowing an evil to continue without constitutional separation is a desire to do evil. 

  • PlaffelvohfenPlaffelvohfen 3985 Pts   -  
    @TKDB

    You know (or then maybe not), those long vacuous posts serve not purpose... Repeating yourself doesn't reinforce your points... 

    You don't have any real arguments to counter my own and will thus try anything to deflect and dodge...  
    " Adversus absurdum, contumaciter ac ridens! "
  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -  
    @Plaffelvohfen

    Easy talk from a chronic anti prohibition peddler.

    This is all that you have to peddle your opinion with Plaffelvohfen, your truth:

    "You know (or then maybe not), those long vacuous posts serve not purpose... Repeating yourself doesn't reinforce your points... 

    You don't have any real arguments to counter my own and will thus try anything to deflect and dodge..."

    Says the online anti prohibition peddler.

    The below is the truth, that your internet opinion can't handle:

    Why don't you reach out, and challenge the below websites, with your pro illegal drug philosophy? 

    https://calmca.org/

    "Citizens Against Legalizing Marijuana (CALM) is an all-volunteer Political Action Committee dedicated to defeating any effort to legalize marijuana."

     
    https://poppot.org/
     

    "LARGE NEW STUDY SHOWS TEEN CANNABIS USE RISK FOR LATER DEPRESSION"


    "HEADLINES BRING UP MORE MARIJUANA – RELATED BEHAVIORAL ISSUES"


    "MY 16-YEAR-OLD SON DIED FROM MARIJUANA"


    Keep educating me with your anti prohibition rhetoric Plaffelvohfen.
     

  • PlaffelvohfenPlaffelvohfen 3985 Pts   -  
    @TKDB

    You know (or then maybe not), those long vacuous posts serve not purpose... Repeating yourself doesn't reinforce your points... 

    You don't have any real arguments to counter my own and will thus try anything to deflect and dodge...  
    " Adversus absurdum, contumaciter ac ridens! "
  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -  
    @Plaffelvohfen

    Keep educating me with your anti prohibition rhetoric Plaffelvohfen.
  • PlaffelvohfenPlaffelvohfen 3985 Pts   -  
    @TKDB

    I'm trying to, you're just not willing to learn apparently...
    " Adversus absurdum, contumaciter ac ridens! "
  • I know first hand that talking to those who are for legalizing recreational marijuana is a waste of time.

    Here is the basic problem we can not make something legal by law if it was never proven to be illegal as a United State. This is an excuse; it is saying if there is an act of Congress and President of the United States which has set the Nation in an act of War, and Americans are held as captive. There is a burden of Presidential or Presadera repreparation which need to form on a state of the union it creates.

    The truth of harm and mental health has a rather large united state which can be shared with many things that are legislated to the common welfare by controlling means.

  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -  
    https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/nationwide-trends

    "The following are facts and statistics on substance use in the United States in 2013, the most recent year for NSDUH survey results. Approximately 67,800 people responded to the survey in 2013."

    "Illicit Drug Use*

    Illicit drug use in the United States has been increasing. In 2013, an estimated 24.6 million Americans aged 12 or older—9.4 percent of the population—had used an illicit drug in the past month. This number is up from 8.3 percent in 2002. The increase mostly reflects a recent rise in use of marijuana, the most commonly used illicit drug.

    Graph of past-month illicit drug use in 2013 Numbers in Millions Illicit drugs 246 marijuana 198 Prescription drugs 65 cocaine 15 hallucinogens 13 inhalants 05 heroin 03

    Marijuana use has increased since 2007. In 2013, there were 19.8 million current users—about 7.5 percent of people aged 12 or older—up from 14.5 million (5.8 percent) in 2007.

    Use of most drugs other than marijuana has stabilized over the past decade or has declined. In 2013, 6.5 million Americans aged 12 or older (or 2.5 percent) had used prescription drugs nonmedically in the past month. Prescription drugs include pain relievers, tranquilizers, stimulants, and sedatives. And 1.3 million Americans (0.5 percent) had used hallucinogens (a category that includes ecstasy and LSD) in the past month.

    Cocaine use has gone down in the last few years. In 2013, the number of current users aged 12 or older was 1.5 million. This number is lower than in 2002 to 2007 (ranging from 2.0 million to 2.4 million).

    Methamphetamine use was higher in 2013, with 595,000 current users, compared with 353,000 users in 2010.

    Graph of past-month use of selected illicit drugs From 2002 to 2013 trends for hallucinogens cocaine and prescription drugs have steadied or declined Marijuana trend has increased

    Most people use drugs for the first time when they are teenagers. There were just over 2.8 million new users of illicit drugs in 2013, or about 7,800 new users per day. Over half (54.1 percent) were under 18 years of age.

    More than half of new illicit drug users begin with marijuana. Next most common are prescription pain relievers, followed by inhalants (which is most common among younger teens).

    Pie chart of first specific drug associated with initiation of drug use in 2013 Of 28 million initiate users Marijuana 703 pain relievers 125 inhalants 63 tranquilizers 52 stimulants 27 hallucinogens 26  sedatives 02 cocaine 01

    Drug use is highest among people in their late teens and twenties. In 2013, 22.6 percent of 18- to 20-year-olds reported using an illicit drug in the past month.

    Graph of past-month illicit drug use by age in 2012 and 2013 Eighteen to 20 year-olds 239 in 2012 and 226 in 2013 Twenty-one to 25 year-olds 197 in 2012 and 209 in 2013

    Drug use is increasing among people in their fifties and early sixties. This increase is, in part, due to the aging of the baby boomers, whose rates of illicit drug use have historically been higher than those of previous generations."

    Graph of past-month use among adults 50 to 64 years old In 2013 50 to 54 year-olds 79 55 to 59 year-olds 57 60 to 64 year-olds 39

    "After alcohol, marijuana has the highest rate of dependence or abuse among all drugs. In 2013, 4.2 million Americans met clinical criteria for dependence or abuse of marijuana in the past year—more than twice the number for dependence/abuse of prescription pain relievers (1.9 million) and nearly five times the number for dependence/abuse of cocaine (855,000).
    Graph of specific illicit drug dependence or abuse in the past year 2013 Number in thousands Marijuana 4206 pain relievers 1897 cocaine 855 heroin 517 stimulants 469 tranquilizers 423 hallucinogens 277 inhalants 132 sedatives 99

    There continues to be a large "treatment gap" in this country. In 2013, an estimated 22.7 million Americans (8.6 percent) needed treatment for a problem related to drugs or alcohol, but only about 2.5 million people (0.9 percent) received treatment at a specialty facility."


    https://www.addictioncenter.com/addiction/addiction-statistics/

    "Addiction Statistics

    Knowing the statistics of addiction can provide an understanding of the risks as well as reassurance that you are not alone, as addiction affects millions of people.

    Statistics of Addiction in America"

    "Addiction is more common than many realize. There were approximately 20.6 million people in the United States over the age of 12 with an addiction in 2011.

    Although most people don’t get the treatment they need, over 3 million people in 2011 received treatment for their addiction. Learn more about your treatment options today.

    • Over 20 million Americans over the age of 12 have an addiction (excluding tobacco).
    • 100 people die every day from drug overdoses. This rate has tripled in the past 20 years.
    • Over 5 million emergency room visits in 2011 were drug related.
    • 2.6 million people with addictions have a dependence on both alcohol and illicit drugs.
    • 9.4 million people in 2011 reported driving under the influence of illicit drugs.
    • 6.8 million people with an addiction have a mental illness.
    • Rates of illicit drug use is highest among those aged 18 to 25.
    • Over 90% of those with an addiction began drinking, smoking or using illicit drugs before the age of 18."

    "Alcohol Statistics

    Alcoholism is one of the most common addictions affecting Americans. It is also an addiction that goes untreated in many cases because of the legality of the substance. However, the recorded rates of alcoholism are decreasing (18.1 million people in 2002 to 16.7 million in 2011), but the addiction is still a cause for concern. Find out more about your alcohol treatment and recovery options.

    • Binge drinking is more common in men; 9.1% of men 12 and older reported heavy drinking 5 or more days in a month, while 2.6% of women reported this.
    • Over 11% of Americans have driven under the influence.
    • Out of 16.6 million people with alcoholism, 2.6 million were also dependent on an illicit substance.
    • It is estimated that over 95% of those who need treatment for alcoholism do not feel they need treatment.
    • More people receive treatment for alcohol than any other substance.
    • Over 30% of those who received treatment in 2011 reported using public or private health insurance to pay for treatment."
    More information on the illegal drug statistics.
    Plaffelvohfen
  • @TKDB ;
    Again the statistics are truth. They are not addressing the grievance I am raising by 1st Amendment.

    The statistics are not an argument of the civil liability of holding United States Prisoners of War in relationship U.S. Institutions to punish for the public use of lethal force by some, not all those who have become involved in the combat. Drug War is a status that was approved by both Congress and President of the United States of America.

    In basic principle explain a drug. Marijuana is not a drug; Hashish is a drug. You do understand this correct? In a Drug War the Idea of Marijuana being a narcotic is questionable conduct. It is the issue of murders for control which had made it necessary. The lengthy prison terms are in relationship to murders which had been motivated for money not cannabis.  


  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -  
    @John_C_87

    You're entitled to your opinion, and your opinion fails, in comparison to the statistical facts.

    Have a good night.
  • @TKDB ;

    Again, you are talking about opinion and fact. Even after I have confirmed there is truth in what you say. I am going to make something clear for you. When you use information collected by others that describes a danger that some-one is putting their own life in, you are then setting a legal precedent of only danger. The truth here this is opinion that may make us both out to be some kind of savior. Whole truth is we are fighting a War, the War is to take control of the murders of people including those in the public not ground that already resting in to United States control, this War is for a control of the registered receipt which holds a placed cost on the cannabis and properties within state. The complication legal issue is counterfeiting by an intellectual means making it hard to understand.

    What I am addressing with you is the level of negligence that might be taking place in an over reaction and not the threat of safety one person may put on their life in. A person as a liberty to walk away from second hand smoke. A person l has a liberty to restrict how something effects others personal space. A War exists, a drug War. Have your heard of it? People are inadvertently placing a price on other head of people they may know or not know. Just because one side or a portion of one side wants to now stop fighting, to see if they too can also take profit does not mean a War has been ended. A p[participant who has profited may to find issues in spending proceeds. In War’s there are United States, these states are often separated as battles with objective strategy that produce a realistic means to a greater cause.

    When I ask a question publicly inquiring about the united state of understanding the legality of marijuana. Do you know cannabis, marijuana, hemp, weed, ganju, reefer, etc. does not hold a united state as a principle to be placed as just legal? Health hazard, seriously. We are using an existing precedent health hazard to measure a possible overreaction in general idea of hazard of War, which has a precedent in regulation set on controlled use as the reasoning. You are voting to sustain a declaration of War which detains United States citizens in a Congressional Armed services status of P.O.W.  A Status holding citizens in both Federal Prison and State Prison. The prisoner of War may or may not be aware of a looming additional criminal association they face.


  • From a legal stand point a civil inquirer is to look for allatives to speed the separation of P.O.W. to simply a person who has  an independent religious captivation which is without cost or assigned self-value.  
  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -  
    @John_C_87

    Bye.
  • TKDB said:

    @TKDB ;

    Are you asking to be dismissed from any part from any part of are debate on civil  malice P.O.W’s You are presenting precedent which supports the narcotic status a marijuana are you not?


  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -  
    @John_C_87

    , you're an attention seeker.

    I've moved off, from feeding your philosophical musings, you can educate, someone else.
  • So you official rebuttal in debate is that P.O.W.'s in a civil War, such as the Drug War is a philosophy?  Are you saying a basic principle which separates a constitutional state between Military and Congressional Armed Force is a Philosophy. Very true.

    Have an honorable knight. I believe you lack both creditable fiber or honor to defend yourself let alone any other.
  • MayCaesarMayCaesar 5967 Pts   -  
    Anyone who wants to buy marijuana nowadays, can do it with zero difficulty. All one needs is to go on the street and ask the first thuggish-looking person they encounter, "Hey, , know where I can get the stuff?" 

    The ban on it has the same effects as the ban on prostitution: it does not eliminate anything and merely moves it into the criminal realm, which benefits criminals and harms everyone else.
    And even more so, it only makes it more appealing to people, as a forbidden fruit is always tastier than a non-forbidden one.

    Do you know when alcohol consumption was the highest in the history of the US? In the years of prohibition. Restrictions of marijuana consumption lead to the same statistics. And, indeed, recently marijuana consumption in the US has been record-high, and it only started slightly decreasing around 2013 - exactly the time when the marijuana legalisation started occurring in multiple cities and states.

    As appealing as it may be to want to ban everything you dislike, it is a naive child's mentality. Grown adults realise that the world more complex than that, and just because someone issued penalty for something, does not mean people will avoid doing that something.
    PlaffelvohfenMajoMILSdlGMGV
  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -  
    @MayCaesar

    "Anyone who wants to buy marijuana nowadays, can do it with zero difficulty. All one needs is to go on the street and ask the first thuggish-looking person they encounter, "Hey, , know where I can get the stuff?"  

    That's quite the story MayCaesar.

  • Anyone who wants to buy marijuana nowadays, can do it with zero difficulty. All one needs is to go on the street and ask the first thuggish-looking person they encounter, "Hey, , know where I can get the stuff?" 

    Okay, to add some depth of whole truth. Anyone in the United States of America can go into a hardware store and buy Marijuana rope. In many of those stores they will pay sales tax. I do not see the sales personnel in the hardware store killing other sales people from a different hardware store location.

    When addressing law and illegal activity a drug has a constant united state with patent registration in the area of chemical formulation and compounds. This United State is shared as a type of drug is narcotic.

  • MajoMILSdlGMGVMajoMILSdlGMGV 103 Pts   -  
    I honestly skipped the last half part of  the debate except for a couple of posts above this, it was just so ... I can't even find a word for it. Maybe it was just my laziness, maybe it wasn't. 

    There is no real and universal truth, we can only attempt to get as close to one as possible. My grandfather always says that every head is a world of its own. Everyone perceives reality differently and it's extremely difficult to agree on what the truth is. Yes there are a lot of things that can be proven as reality, but others not so much.

    What I'm trying to get at is that everyone has their own experience with the use of Marijuana. Some have experienced an irresponsible use of the drug and the negative impact it can have on people. Others have experienced a responsible and positive use of marijuana; while others don't have any experience at all. But why should we all suffer for the lack of responsibility of other people? What should be considered is to take advantage of all its benefits by making it legal while at the same time implementing strategies to avoid the negative impacts. I believe this is what is intended when a lot of people advocate and agree with the opinion that marijuana and other drugs should be legal. 

    I also believe that by legalizing marihuana and other drugs there can be a better control of what substances are added or not to those drugs, who buys them, how frequently they buy them, etc. This can provide more concrete information on the situation of marijuana consumption. The government can also focus more of their resources on rehabilitation and other strategies to combat irresponsible use of drugs as well as addiction. Putting drug addicts in jail does not solve their problem, a lot of them find a way to get access to drugs inside prison and when they get out they go back to old habits. Instead they should have rehabilitation and a stronger support system available to them. 

    These are just my opinions, and I will back them up with more concrete information in another post. I also would like to apologize for any spelling or grammatical errors. English is not my native language but I try my best. 

    Greetings to all! 


    Plaffelvohfen
  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -  
    http://momsstrong.org/

    "They say marijuana doesn't kill anyone. We wish that were true. These are our stories.

    Cannabis Poses a Risk for Mental Health Problems and Suicide. These testimonials and the scientific research are convincing. Marijuana Kills."

    "Andy's Story

    This is the story of my son Andy Zorn…

    Andy was born in 1982 and had a joyful life easily making and keeping friends. It was his mission to make friends and family laugh and have a good time and he was GOOD at it. He was class clown. He made parties come alive. When he grew older he helped good friends with their mental health and substance abuse issues.

    But it all began to get harder for him to do as he became a teen and thought he had to participate in drinking and drugs to fit in. He was good at hiding the extent to which he indulged in these activities and surprised everyone with his statements in a suicide note:

    “My soul is already dead. Marijuana killed my soul + ruined my brain.” 

  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -   edited April 2019
    @John_C_87 ;

    I'm saying that a weed addict is going to do what pleases his or her addiction mindset, because they've chosen, to forfeit their lives, to please their drug addiction.

    Isn't that mindset, a staggering rationalization?

    Instead, of prioritizing, and placing their families, their freedom, and their own funds, above their illegal drug choices, and or addictions, they instead, treat and place their illegal drug, and their own addictions/ addiction, over their own families, freedoms, and their own hard earned funds?

    So basically, the weed, Opioid, meth, cocaine, heroin, and the prescription drug abusing addicts, are waging a War, on their own bodies, on their own families, on their own freedoms, and on their own funds, to please, pander, and cater to, their drug, and or addiction choices or decisions.

    The above, is drug addiction, and drug abuse, in a nutshell.



    "So you official rebuttal in debate is that P.O.W.'s in a civil War, such as the Drug War is a philosophy?  Are you saying a basic principle which separates a constitutional state between Military and Congressional Armed Force is a Philosophy. Very true.

    Have an honorable knight. I believe you lack both creditable fiber or honor to defend yourself let alone any other."


  • @TKDB ;

    I'm saying that a weed addict is going to do what pleases his or her addiction mindset, because they've chosen, to forfeit their lives, to please their drug addiction? I see this as a truth not a question. It is a united state thought the extent of addiction is not measured in a way which can be compared easily to other things also addicting to people.

    Isn't that mindset, a staggering rationalization? No, it is not staggering at all the average citizen of America is at liberty. At liberty to hold a common defense as united state. I m not debating the legal idea of law enforcement the civil idea of the law that is to be enforced is under the question for its United states constitutional validity. If you hold up your end of the common defense and grow a marijuana plant. You hold the \power to prove yourself wrong. No-one else holds that power for you.

    1.      How it must be governed as a united state.

    2.      The summery of what you are addressing is not addiction it is patent protection and marijuana has been added to a list of narcotics.

    3.      Your addictions list is does not address a united state of addiction it addresses a united state of Narcotics baring one substance.

    4.      We are riding an authority set on Civil War. The United States Drug War is a Civil World Word. My biggest debate openly about this War is if it should be openly recondited as the WWIII it is.

    The above, is drug addiction, and drug abuse, in a nutshell. No, it is not about addiction, the above-mentioned abuses taking place are taking place in a Civil War, the principle which binds them to the pubic in a united State is murder for control of Federal Reserve Note. Not addiction. The negligence in your command that describes its required relief of duty is the ignoring of this truth.

    Have an honorable knight. I believe you lack both creditable fiber or honor to defend yourself let alone any other."

    This truth I state is to identify the independence of a nation won the independence of the American Knight. They are no longer an appointment of just a King or Queen by blessing of church. As often so with the authority of monarchy. They are bound to the duties and honor a United States Constitution and President which may by liberty of vote not be the Executive officer.


  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -   edited April 2019
    @John_C_87

    Where is this rationalization of yours coming from?

    "This truth I state is to identify the independence of a nation won the independence of the American Knight. They are no longer an appointment of just a King or Queen by blessing of church. As often so with the authority of monarchy. They are bound to the duties and honor a United States Constitution and President which may by liberty of vote not be the Executive officer."

    What books, magazines, existing websites, or independent publications, are you basing your opinions from? 

    Did you see this information?

    http://momsstrong.org/

    "They Say Marijuana Doesn't Kill Anyone. We Wish That Were True. These Are Our Stories.

    Cannabis Poses a Risk for Mental Health Problems and Suicide. These testimonials and the scientific research are convincing. Marijuana Kills."

    "Andy's Story

    This is the story of my son Andy Zorn…

    Andy was born in 1982 and had a joyful life easily making and keeping friends. It was his mission to make friends and family laugh and have a good time and he was GOOD at it. He was class clown. He made parties come alive. When he grew older he helped good friends with their mental health and substance abuse issues.

    But it all began to get harder for him to do as he became a teen and thought he had to participate in drinking and drugs to fit in. He was good at hiding the extent to which he indulged in these activities and surprised everyone with his statements in a suicide note:

    “My soul is already dead. Marijuana killed my soul + ruined my brain.”  

    The moms strong.org website is an educational, and informative website.



  • Where is this rationalization of yours coming from?

    A search for basic principle inside books, magazines, website, people, and independent works in many forms of media.

    When a Governing state and Federal Governing agency describe Marijuana as a narcotic. Why do they then turn to the democracy for vote to verify they have given a right for the medical profession to right a prescription for that narcotic?

  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -  
    @John_C_87

    "A search for basic principle inside books, magazines, website, people, and independent works in many forms of media."

    And you're providing no legitimate links to any of your expressed sources, to support your individual talking points? 

    And the below rhetoric, sounds a bit like rambling?

    "When a Governing state and Federal Governing agency describe Marijuana as a narcotic. Why do they then turn to the democracy for vote to verify they have given a right for the medical profession to right a prescription for that narcotic?"
  • And the below rhetoric, sounds a bit like rambling?

    It might be rambling or rhetoric all the information comes from you as a source. Remember I just simply agreed with what you had been writing as truth. Then apply a Presidential Constitutional repreparation to locate and idetify basic principles.  We are working a as team to describe whole truth from that written truth, in the most basic and direct way.

    The Federal Government includes marijuana as a Narcotic, therefore so do many states by following the federal precedent labeling marijuana as narcotic. Truth or not. The Federal Government has given approval of state licensed doctors to issue narcotics by prescription already. Holding truths as self-evident is not simply rhetoric it is a displayed expression of preservation to United States Constitution as precedent.

    The basic principle in a civil War of this nature, that being the decelerated of Drug War made by House and Presidents of these united States in union, is a public service as common defense to the general welfare. Doctors are treating an influence of prescription narcotics that may have been directed into a non-narcotic in religious and public use.







  • The difference here was human life and not the allocations of property in the form of Federal Reserve note or land.
  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -   edited April 2019
    @John_C_87

    Just more of your individual "truth philosophy."

    The below is the truth, however you may view it through your truth philosophy lens.

    I'm saying that a weed addict is going to do what pleases his or her addiction mindset, because they've chosen, to forfeit their lives, to please their drug addiction.

    Isn't that mindset, a staggering rationalization?

    Instead, of prioritizing, and placing their families, their freedom, and their own funds, above their illegal drug choices, and or addictions, they instead, treat and place their illegal drug, and their own addictions/ addiction, over their own families, freedoms, and their own hard earned funds.

    So basically, the weed, Opioid, meth, cocaine, heroin, and the prescription drug abusing addicts, are waging a War, on their own bodies, on their own families, on their own freedoms, and on their own funds, to please, pander, and cater to, their drug, and or addiction choices or decisions.

    The above, is drug addiction, and drug abuse, in a nutshell. 
  • Good morning TKDB. Happy Easter.

    Isn't that mindset, a staggering rationalization?  No, it is relisticly a mindset that is shared with a number of other religions as a united state.

  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -   edited April 2019
    @John_C_87

    Where's your legitimate evidence, to support, your self rationalized claim?

    In regards to Marijuana, and religion? 

    "No, it is relisticly a mindset that is shared with a number of other religions as a united state."

  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -  
    https://www.catholicnh.org/community/public-issues/issues/marijuana/

    "Marijuana (Decriminalization and Legalization)

    Marijuana represents a significant part of substance abuse in the United States and adversely affects the health of many Americans. The widespread use and abuse of marijuana, particularly by young people under the age of eighteen, is steadily increasing while scientific evidence clearly links its long-term damaging effects on brain development.

    The Catholic Church teaches that life and physical health are precious gifts entrusted to us by God and that we must take reasonable care of them. Catechism of the Catholic Church note 2288. “The use of drugs inflicts very grave damage on human health and life. Their use, except on strictly therapeutic grounds, is a grave offense.” Catechism at note 2291.

    For these reasons, the Diocese of Manchester has urged state legislators to reject efforts to legalize marijuana."



  • PlaffelvohfenPlaffelvohfen 3985 Pts   -   edited April 2019
    @TKDB

    Sugar represents a significant part of substance abuse in the United States and adversely affects the health of many Americans. The widespread use and abuse of sugar, particularly by young people under the age of eighteen, is steadily increasing while scientific evidence clearly links its long-term damaging effects on overall health of the population (overweight issues, diabetes, cardiac issues, etc).

    Yet, who advocates for making sugar illegal?

    As for your second point, which is that the Catholic Church has an opinion on this, is irrelevant from a legal stand point, separation of State and Church, you know... This Catholic Church opinion is only relevant to practicing members of this religion and is in no way authoritative to anyone who's not... 
    MajoMILSdlGMGV
    " Adversus absurdum, contumaciter ac ridens! "
  • MajoMILSdlGMGVMajoMILSdlGMGV 103 Pts   -  
    I've been reading an article about Medical Marijuana Laws and its relation to suicide. It also gives information on relation between marijuana use and alcohol use. This is some of the information I have found relevant to the debate. 

    Apparently only a handful of Medical Marijuana Laws permit the use of medical marijuana for mental health problems which means that a lot of the use of marijuana by those with mental disorders is probably not within these laws. For example, California allows the use of medical marijuana for anxiety, while Delaware and New Mexico allow the use of medical marijuana for Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. 

    The article share the following information:
    Gorman and Huber (2007) examined data on adult arrestees for the period 1995– 2002 from Denver, Los Angeles, Portland, San Diego and San Jose. They found little evidence that marijuana use by arrestees increased as a result of legalization. In contrast, Wall et al. (2011) found that rates of marijuana use among 12- through 17-year-olds were higher in states that had legalized medical marijuana than in states that had not, but noted that “in the years prior to MML passage, there was already a higher prevalence of use and lower perceptions of risk” in states that had legalized medical marijuana.

    We can obviously see that underage use increased in states that legalized medical marijuana, which is an issue that must be addressed by the government in order to have a better control of availability to under-age people, but we all know that kids always find a way if they want to, we just have to make it more difficult for them. 

    There is also evidence that shows that marijuana use  increased among the ages of 18 - 25 in states that allowed the use of medical marijuana in the 2000s. There is also evidence that some state show no increase in use of marijuana. 

    There was also an examination of alcohol consumption and how it was affected by the Medical Marijuana Laws. The article states that: 

    Using data from the Fatal Accident Report System (FARS) for the period 1990-2009, they found that legalization of medical marijuana led to a sharp reduction in fatal crashes involving alcohol. In addition, using data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) for the same period, they found evidence that legalization led to a 25 percent reduction in self-reported alcohol consumption among 20- through 29- year-olds; using data from the Beer Institute, they found that legalization led to a 5.3 percent decrease in per capita beer sales, the most popular alcoholic beverage among young adults (Jones 2008). 5 Anderson et al. (2011) concluded that their results were “consistent with the hypothesis that marijuana and alcohol are substitutes” (p. 18).6

    I believe that this is a positive side-effect of the legalization of marijuana. But that is just my personal opinion. 

    According to this article, there have been animal studies that prove that a low dose of synthetic cannabis can have an anti-depressant effect on the brain. There is also proof that a higher dose of marijuana can reduce serotonin transmission which leads to "depression-like behavior". The majority of epidemiological studies have found that marijuana is positively related to symptoms of depression and suicidal ideation. They also state that any associations between marijuana use and outcomes such as this could be driven by difficult-to-observe factors or simply reflect self-medication. 

    Moore et al. (2007, p. 325) concluded their review of the literature by noting that “the majority of studies for affective outcomes [such as depression and suicidal ideation] did not adequately address the problem of reverse causation as a possible alternative explanation for any association observed.” 

    There was a study conducted in which they observed suicide trends by legalization status. 

    For states that legalized medical marijuana, we report the suicide rate for the three years prior to legalization, the year in which the law changed (year 0), and the three years following legalization. For states that did not legalize medical marijuana during the period under study, the year in which the law changed was randomly assigned.

    These are the results:

    The total suicide rate falls smoothly during the pre-legalization period in both MML and nonMML states. However, beginning in year 0, the trends diverge: the suicide rate in MML states continues to fall, while the suicide rate in states that never legalized medical marijuana begins to climb gradually. 

    ... postlegalization downward trend in male suicides is much more pronounced than the postlegalization downward trend in female suicides.

    Consistent with the hypothesis that marijuana can be an effective treatment for depression and other mood disorders, there appears to be a sharp decrease in the suicide rate of 15- through 19-year olds males in the treatment states as compared to the control states approximately two years after legalization. A similar decrease can be seen for 20- through 59-year-old males and there is a modest decrease in the suicide rate of males 60 years of age and older approximately three years after legalization. Among females under the age of 40, there is little evidence that legalization lead to a decrease in the suicide rate. However, among older females, there appears to be a small decrease in the suicide rate two to three years after legalization.

    If you want to read the whole articles and see more specific details on results including graphs here is the link: 
    https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=485064027065072064081076103016117107041048072043057026110037024043104082086111068094069119077026012103122026102093084123071065020026099081003109012067006109068127111004028101116&EXT=pdf

    What I can conclude from this article and the studies it presents is that marijuana if used correctly and under supervision of professionals it can have positive effects on suicide rates, but if self-medicated it can have negative effects on people. Once again, the legalization of marijuana doesn't have a whole truth to wether its positive or negative. It's both and we can only try to make the positive effects more than the negative. 

    Greetings!
  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -   edited April 2019
    @Plaffelvohfen

    Your sugar rebuttal, was used, almost a decade ago, by some of the self proclaimed recreational weed user's, who came to the internet via other debate websites, to shove their drug user attitudes, down the rest of the publics throats, because their illegal recreational weed use, was more important to them, then anything else apparently was, or is?

    "Sugar represents a significant part of substance abuse in the United States and adversely affects the health of many Americans. The widespread use and abuse of sugar, particularly by young people under the age of eighteen, is steadily increasing while scientific evidence clearly links its long-term damaging effects on overall health of the population (overweight issues, diabetes, cardiac issues, etc)."

    Who's been advocating on the weed addicts behalf, some of their legal counsel,  maybe they themselves, maybe their own families, or maybe this or that organization? 

    Because free publicity, makes for a slick way to push their legalization of recreational weed legalization, right? 

    "Yet, who advocates for making sugar illegal?"

    Take your below grievance over the religion point of view with (John_C_87)

    "Happy Easter.

    No, it is relisticly a mindset that is shared with a number of other religions as a united state."

    My religion response, was in response to his above comment.


    "As for your second point, which is that the Catholic Church as an opinion on this, is irrelevant from a legal stand point, separation of State and Church, you know... This Catholic Church opinion is only relevant to practicing members of this religion and is in no way authoritative to anyone who's not..."


  • PlaffelvohfenPlaffelvohfen 3985 Pts   -  
    @TKDB

    Funny how you can't seem to be able to address the points... 
    " Adversus absurdum, contumaciter ac ridens! "
  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -  
    @Plaffelvohfen

    I did address your points.

    But apparently they didn't address your rhetoric, to your individual liking, right?

    Your sugar rebuttal, was used, almost a decade ago, by some of the self proclaimed recreational weed user's, who came to the internet via other debate websites, to shove their drug user attitudes, down the rest of the publics throats, because their illegal recreational weed use, was more important to them, then anything else apparently was, or is?

    "Sugar represents a significant part of substance abuse in the United States and adversely affects the health of many Americans. The widespread use and abuse of sugar, particularly by young people under the age of eighteen, is steadily increasing while scientific evidence clearly links its long-term damaging effects on overall health of the population (overweight issues, diabetes, cardiac issues, etc)."

    Who's been advocating on the weed addicts behalf, some of their legal counsel,  maybe they themselves, maybe their own families, or maybe this or that organization? 

    Because free publicity, makes for a slick way to push their legalization of recreational weed legalization, right? 

    "Yet, who advocates for making sugar illegal?"

    Take your below grievance over the religion point of view with (John_C_87)

    "Happy Easter.

    No, it is relisticly a mindset that is shared with a number of other religions as a united state."

    My religion response, was in response to his above comment.


    "As for your second point, which is that the Catholic Church as an opinion on this, is irrelevant from a legal stand point, separation of State and Church, you know... This Catholic Church opinion is only relevant to practicing members of this religion and is in no way authoritative to anyone who's not..." 

  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -  
    @Plaffelvohfen

    There's plenty of educational information below:

    The articles speak for themselves.


    https://nypost-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/nypost.com/2014/03/05/third-graders-caught-smoking-pot-in-school-bathroom/amp/?amp_js_v=a2&amp_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQCCAE=#referrer=https://www.google.com&amp_tf=From %1$s&ampshare=https://nypost.com/2014/03/05/third-graders-caught-smoking-pot-in-school-bathroom/ 

    "Third-graders caught smoking pot in school bathroom

    By Reuters

    March 5, 2014 | 6:33pm

    Three third-graders were caught smoking marijuana in the boys’ bathroom of their northern California elementary school last week in what the local police chief says marked the youngest pot bust he has ever encountered.

    The three boys – two 8-year-olds and one 9-year-old – were caught last Thursday by another student, who informed school administrators, who in turn alerted local law enforcement, said Sonora Police Chief Mark Stinson.

    Police officers detained the youngsters for questioning, then released them to their parents, Stinson said.

    The police chief of Sonora, a picturesque “Gold Country” town in the Sierra foothills about 130 miles east of San Francisco, said the youngest person he previously knew of being busted for smoking pot was about 10 years of age.

    A pipe and a very small amount of marijuana were seized in last Thursday’s incident, he said, adding that the boys seemed to have had little smoking experience and did not appear to be under the influence when confronted."

    "Stinson declined to comment on anything the boys said, or on the possible origins of the pot, except to say that “it came from several sources.”

    He said the incident will remain under investigation to determine whether the boys could be considered criminally culpable. Under California law, no one under 12 is usually charged with a crime, but the boys could be subject to juvenile justice proceedings.

    “The first step is – we have to determine whether they knew right from wrong,” he told Reuters.

    The superintendent of the local school district, Leigh Shampain, declined to comment on any details of the case but confirmed that students had been caught smoking marijuana in the school restroom last week.

    Both he and the police chief said the case underscores concerns that legalizing marijuana for recreational use by adults in California would make it easier for minors to gain access to pot in the future."

    "Said Stinson, “It’s something to think about.”

    "California in 1996 became the first of 20 U.S. states to allow marijuana use for medical purposes, and a Field Poll in December found that 55 percent of registered voters supported expanding legalization to recreational use.

    Colorado and Washington state approved ballot measures doing just that in November 2012. The last time such a proposal was put to California voters, in 2010, it was defeated."

    https://www-coloradopolitics-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.coloradopolitics.com/news/cover-story-pot-goes-to-school-with-marijuana-legal-in/article_d3e3af2e-20e5-51ff-8967-d56a6433533e.amp.html?amp_js_v=a2&amp_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQCCAE=#referrer=https://www.google.com&amp_tf=From %1$s&ampshare=https://www.coloradopolitics.com/news/cover-story-pot-goes-to-school-with-marijuana-legal-in/article_d3e3af2e-20e5-51ff-8967-d56a6433533e.html

    "COVER STORY: Pot goes to school: With marijuana legal in Colorado, student encounters are rising"

    Colorado’s cultural acceptance of marijuana by adults is seeping into public school classrooms.

    The result is more marijuana-related suspensions of students, more police visits to schools for marijuana incidents, and a greater acceptance of the drug by students who live in communities with recreational dispensaries, two new state studies and a third from a university institute show.

    Twenty times in a typical school day, Colorado kids are reported for illegal marijuana use.

    Statewide, marijuana suspensions jumped 18 percent in the 2016-17 school year, new data from the Colorado Department of Education show.

    A separate study by the state Division of Criminal Justice also suggests the drug has become a growing enforcement problem. Police contacts for marijuana jumped from 17 percent of all contacts for the 2012 and 2013 school years to one in four last school year. Alcohol and other drugs lagged far behind in police calls.

    While those numbers are up, the 3,147 marijuana suspensions in the last school year still represent only 1 percent of Colorado’s public school population.

    But the numbers also show some kids are starting to smoke or ingest marijuana at very young ages.

    One-seventh of the offenses recorded last year involved middle school children, and prosecutors say some children start smoking pot as young as 11 years old.

    The new Division of Criminal Justice numbers from last school year show 368 total incidents of all types at elementary schools, with 13 percent involving marijuana. At middle schools, 18 percent of the total 1,809 incidents involved pot, as did 30 percent of the total 4,118 incidents at high schools.

    A study finalized in March from the Institute of Cannabis Research at Colorado State University-Pueblo includes a look at attitudes and perceptions of high school students in communities that since 2014 have opened recreational pot stores, such as Pueblo, and those that have not, including Colorado Springs.

    Conclusions are that students in Colorado communities that permit recreational dispensaries used more cannabis and thought marijuana was less harmful and less wrong than high school students in communities that did not allow recreational pot stores.

    The study offers this as a possible explanation: “The high school students mirror the behavior and perceptions of the adult population of their communities.”

    The findings were surprising, said Rick Kreminski, institute director and executive director of research and sponsored programs at CSU-Pueblo, “not because there’s a difference between students in communities that permitted cannabis dispensaries compared with communities that did not, but because there was no statistical change pre- and post-2014,” Kreminski said.

    Student attitudes have remained the same before and after legalization in terms of how harmful students perceive the use of marijuana to be and how wrong they think cannabis use is, Kreminski said.

    Gregory Ecks, director of student discipline services for Colorado Springs School District 11, said it was only logical that students in cities where marijuana has been embraced would find it more acceptable. “Any time something is considered legal and has been discussed as having benefits, you’re going to see kids default to it,” Ecks said. “There’s become an acceptance, and kids are going to experiment.”

     

    Dueling dataConsiderable debate swirls around the question of teen use rates since Colorado legalized recreational marijuana for adults, with stores opening in 2014 following passage of a constitutional amendment in late 2012. One widely quoted state report — the Healthy Kids Colorado Survey — found no significant change in juvenile use from 2013 to 2015.

    Critics of that study say it takes only one snapshot every two years, and some of Colorado’s largest school districts — including those in Jefferson and Douglas counties and most districts in El Paso County — did not take part in 2015.But Mike Van Dyke, chief of environmental epidemiology at the state Department of Public Health and Environment, stands by Healthy Kids’ conclusions. He said fewer middle school students took the survey in 2015 but 16,000 high school students took part, and long-term trends suggest marijuana use by high school students peaked in the 1990s.

    “We believe it’s the best survey available of marijuana use among high school kids,” he said.

    Some law enforcement and school officials say that doesn’t match the reality they see.

    They prefer to cite statistics gathered by Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, an organization of police groups whose goal is to reduce drug use, which shows teen marijuana use increasing over time.

    Its section on marijuana use by youth relies on a survey by a federal agency, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSA), and ignores the Healthy Kids Colorado Survey, although both are incorporated into the overarching federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics.

    The two surveys apparently have at least one question in common: Have you used marijuana over the past 30 days?The most recent Healthy Kids report showed 21 percent of teens said they had used marijuana within the past 30 days, a figure that hasn’t changed much in recent years.

    The SAMSA survey, which cites Colorado as the most prevalent state for youth pot smoking, showed 16.5 percent answered the question positively, but that was an increase from previous years. In 2013-14 it was 15 percent, and in 2008-09 it was only about 10 percent, according to the report.

    Levon Hupfer, an addiction counselor who runs the juvenile diversion program in Adams County, harbors little doubt that more kids are getting stoned at school.

    He calls it tragic that the first state to legalize recreational marijuana is short of adolescent psychiatrists and residential treatment centers for kids with drug troubles.

    “At the end of the day, Colorado kids have lost. Colorado families have lost,” Hupfer said. “We’re failing as a state.”An analysis found that when kids are caught stoned at school, enforcement policies vary greatly. Some districts routinely call police. Others simply send students home.

    In cases where police took action, arrests were infrequent. Statewide, tickets accounted for 97 percent of all penalties and arrests accounted for 3 percent last school year. That was down from 7 percent arrests the year before.

     Eclipsing alcoholBehind all these numbers are the kids.

    He’s a handsome, charming boy with blond-streaked brown hair and a touch of teenage acne. He describes his family as upper middle class.

    He started smoking pot when he was a 15-year-old high school sophomore. Two years later he is hoping to pass Douglas County’s juvenile diversion program.

    It hasn’t been easy. He failed seven urinalysis tests before he was clean enough to enter the program. Relapses followed.

    A friend introduced him to marijuana after his sophomore sweetheart broke his heart.

    “You can forget everything. It helps you sleep at night. You can become loose with the world,” his friend said.

    It worked. He felt he didn’t have a worry in the world. He reveled in strands of deep thought, though he promptly forgot them.

    His habit grew. By the time a police officer spotted marijuana in the backseat of his car, he was smoking an ounce a month of today’s potent strains.

    In a county without dispensaries, he had three illegal dealers. The seized marijuana came from a fellow teenager.

    “I think she had a private grower,” he said.

    Months of counseling persuaded him that he was avoiding uncomfortable feelings and possibly damaging his adolescent brain.

    Finally, he dumped his remaining stash. He put his glass bongs in his car and tossed them out onto some rocks.Then he called his counselor. He has stayed straight for about three months and enjoys feeling clear-headed.

    But at the high school he attends, “almost everyone I know has tried or uses it. Football team, basketball team, cheerleaders,” he said

    His counselor, Seiji Wallis, sees marijuana eclipsing alcohol as a drug problem among juveniles who enter his program.

    “In diversion we have a much higher percentage of clients whose charge is marijuana or paraphernalia,” he said. “I think it’s an enormous problem, almost epidemic.”

     "Pot easy to getAt Westminster High School north of Denver, three of its students — Ezequiel, L.J. and Jesus — gathered in a conference room with their principal to discuss the prevalence of pot use among their friends and classmates.They say it’s easy to get, but they don’t touch it themselves. They’re student athletes, and avoiding marijuana is a requirement for team sports at this 2,400-student school.

    But among them, they know at least 15 classmates who do smoke illegally. And they’re sophomores.

    Sometimes they smell it on a classmate returning from lunch. Sometimes they notice a friend has vanished at lunchtime, skipping afternoon classes.

    “In school I’ve personally had someone ask me if I wanted any,” Jesus said.

    Jesus turned him down, but he didn’t turn him in. “I told him not to do it again.”

    Ezequiel understood why. Snitch once, and “you have a bad reputation for the rest of your high school career,” he said.

    Entering a marijuana dispensary is not as simple as walking into a liquor store. The products are kept behind locked doors, and adult IDs are required to enter. Yet the Westminster High kids agreed that marijuana is easier to get than alcohol — and more popular.

    “Alcohol has been around for a long time,” Ezequiel explained.

    The boys say some comes from homes of parents who smoke and some from young adults who buy from dispensaries to sell smaller amounts on the street.

    Among Colorado high schools, Westminster has a relatively high suspension rate and often involves police. That’s because “we don’t turn a blind eye to it at all,” said principal Kiffany Kiewiet.

    After four years of enforcement efforts, she said, suspensions are finally dropping this year. But it took work. Recreational marijuana “completely changed how you manage a school,” she said.

    Sometimes it’s impossible for kids to avoid reeking of it. About once a week, a student gets suspected of coming to school stoned when “it’s just from whoever brought them to school,” Kiewiet said.

    As a mother, she worries about the age Colorado kids get introduced to marijuana. “Even he knows about it,” she said of her son, “and he’s only 10.”

    Stacey Collis, president of the Colorado Association of School Resource Officers, also believes marijuana use is rising in the schools.

    He also sees a trend toward “highly concentrated marijuana products. We are seeing a lot of that,” he said, adding that, in his view, marijuana is more of a school problem than alcohol. “It’s been a long time since I’ve written an alcohol ticket,” he said.

     

    Police reporting policies differIn Arapahoe County, District Attorney George Brauchler is a Republican and candidate for state attorney general. In Adams County, District Attorney Dave Young is a Democrat.

    On marijuana, they share political views, agreeing it has been a bad deal for kids.

    “There’s an absolute increase” in marijuana use among school children, Young said. “The increase in violations is out of control.”

    Compared to alcohol, “it’s much easier to smoke pot in high school.”

    “This is a burgeoning problem,” Brauchler said. “There are a good number of kids who report their first use at age 11.”

    Statewide, about one-fourth of all marijuana suspensions are accompanied by law enforcement referrals, according to state data.

    How schools actually handle marijuana offenses depends on the district.

    In Jefferson County, 62 percent of marijuana offenses involve some law enforcement penalty.

    “Jeffco has a traditional, straightforward approach to pot,” said Jennifer Gallegos, its manager of student discipline. “They will contact police and let police decide whether to write a ticket.”

    Gallegos previously worked at Thornton High School in Adams County, where she said the district applied a different policy. There, police would be called “for possession, not necessarily for consumption,” she said.

    Thornton High reported 50 marijuana suspensions last year — and no referrals to police. Its principal, Jennifer Skrobela, referred questions about marijuana policies to Adams 12 Five Star Schools spokesman Joe Ferdani.

    He said the absence of law enforcement reports could be attributed partly to the presence of school resource officers, who juggle important issues such as school security along with marijuana use."

     

    ‘A marketing ploy’Marijuana has delivered on its promise to generate a new source of taxes in Colorado.

    Last fiscal year alone, the state reported $211 million in marijuana taxes, and that amount is projected to grow to $307 million in the next three years.

    Public schools are leading recipients of this money. At least $40 million a year, for example, is dedicated to repairing and replacing existing schools. But that merely plugs a small hole in the overall repair and replacement needs identified by the education department, which total $13.9 billion.

    Some education officials say marijuana taxes have created a false public perception that school budget problems have been solved.

    “We did not support legalization for education dollars,” Jeffco Public Schools spokeswoman Diana Wilson said.

    Many in public education felt it was a marketing ploy to get it passed that has skewed the public perception of how much it actually helps.”

    Her district, for example, received a $825,000 grant from marijuana taxes last year to hire school health professionals. Its general fund budget: $697 million.

    While the grant is appreciated, she said, “there are nowhere near enough marijuana tax dollars to make a significant difference in K-12 public education funding shortages.”

    Mason Tvert, co-director of the campaign to legalize recreational pot use in 2012, said education officials asked for marijuana tax money, and it has been used for everything from improving rural schools to school dropout prevention.

    “No one ever claimed the tax money would fill every void in the state budget,” he said, but as of last May, schools alone had reaped $118 million.

    “To say $118 million is no big deal is ridiculous,” he said.

     

    A reason to leave the stateFor thousands of kids, the consequence for smoking pot is a trip to the principal’s office.

    For Aubree Adams’ eldest son, the outcome was more severe.

    She became an anti-marijuana crusader after he tried to kill himself at the age of 15.

    He had swallowed 250 ibuprofen tablets, and she found him “in a bedroom full of vomit,” she said. “He was in a psychiatric ward for five days.”

    At the hospital, she said, he admitted to “dabbing,” a means of ingesting nearly pure THC.

    She was stunned. “What the heck’s a dab?” she asked.

    She and her husband learned he had been hiding a big secret. In Pueblo, he had started using marijuana edibles in the eighth grade. “

    We knew his behavior was changing but didn’t know why,” she said. “It was very apparent he was coming home impaired.”

    His hospitalization was followed by three more before she was able to find an intensive treatment program for him — in Houston.

    “Finally, we have our son back,” but at great emotional and financial costs, she said. “I will be paying this off for a long time.”

    She is giving up on Colorado as a place to live.

    “There are so many parents using that these kids don’t stand a chance,” she said.

    This summer she plans to return to Texas to look for a new home.pot goes to school

    She says her kids aren’t coming back."

    Plaffelvohfen
  • PlaffelvohfenPlaffelvohfen 3985 Pts   -  
    @TKDB

    You don't address the point, you deflect and evade it... 

    Point is, sugar kills more people each year than cannabis has throughout history... Why are you not petitioning to ban sugar, as it is demonstrably more dangerous? 
    " Adversus absurdum, contumaciter ac ridens! "
  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -   edited April 2019
    @Plaffelvohfen

    Some of the parents in various parts of the country, have used, and exposed their kids to their illegal and legal drug use.

    Are you a supporter of the weed smoking parents, who use their illegal, and legal weed. around their kids?

    Or might you be a supporter of the kids, and support a kid, who shouldn't have to grow up, with their parents using their illegal, or legal weed, around that kid?

    "You don't address the point, you deflect and evade it... 

    Point is, sugar kills more people each year than cannabis has throughout history... Why are you not petitioning to ban sugar, as it is demonstrably more dangerous?"

    Some of the parents across the country, using, and exposing their kids, to their illegal, and legal weed, isn't more dangerous, than sugar in general is? 

    Where might the truth, in your arguments exist? 
     


  • You've asked a huge amount of questions and so I am only going to pick a few that I would like to respond to.

    Only make it easier for some of career marijuana smokers, or the on an off again marijuana users, to get their now legalized marijuana, when previously they would have maybe found themselves being arrested for their illegal marijuana use, or possession?

    I am not sure how one can make a career out smoking weed? Or did you mean something else when you used the word "career?"

    Thus interrupting their own probable, individual family time with their families because of their previously illegal drug use issues?

    Not sure what you mean here. So I am assuming that you think the legalization of marijuana affects quality time with families?


    In the reality of marijuana legalization, has it stopped the underaged marijuana users, from no longer being able to still use marijuana?
    (Reality note, no it hasn't, reason being, the kids who smoked weed prior to the legalization, are still smoking weed, post legalization.)
    I haven't checked the data on it but I don't think a judicial system made something legal with the intention that by doing so would stop underage users from doing it illegally. 




  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -  
    @ZeusAres42

    The weed addicts who have made it a lifestyle career choice, to chase their weed addictions since they were kids, way before weed was legalized.

    "I am not sure how one can make a career out smoking weed? Or did you mean something else when you used the word "career?" 

    The weed addicts, weed addiction, affecting the quality time of their own families.

    So, instead, of prioritizing, and placing their families, their freedom, and their own funds, above their illegal drug choices, and or addictions, they instead, treat and place their illegal drug, and their own addictions/ addiction, over their own families, freedoms, and their own hard earned. funds.

    "Not sure what you mean here. So I am assuming that you think the legalization of marijuana affects quality time with families?"

    "I haven't checked the data on it but I don't think a judicial system made something legal with the intention that by doing so would stop underage users from doing it illegally."

    The below article, should help with your above statement:


    https://www-coloradopolitics-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.coloradopolitics.com/news/cover-story-pot-goes-to-school-with-marijuana-legal-in/article_d3e3af2e-20e5-51ff-8967-d56a6433533e.amp.html?amp_js_v=a2&amp_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQCCAE=#referrer=https://www.google.com&amp_tf=From %1$s&ampshare=https://www.coloradopolitics.com/news/cover-story-pot-goes-to-school-with-marijuana-legal-in/article_d3e3af2e-20e5-51ff-8967-d56a6433533e.html


    "COVER STORY: Pot goes to school: With marijuana legal in Colorado, student encounters are rising"

    Colorado’s cultural acceptance of marijuana by adults is seeping into public school classrooms.

    The result is more marijuana-related suspensions of students, more police visits to schools for marijuana incidents, and a greater acceptance of the drug by students who live in communities with recreational dispensaries, two new state studies and a third from a university institute show.

    Twenty times in a typical school day, Colorado kids are reported for illegal marijuana use.

    Statewide, marijuana suspensions jumped 18 percent in the 2016-17 school year, new data from the Colorado Department of Education show.

    A separate study by the state Division of Criminal Justice also suggests the drug has become a growing enforcement problem. Police contacts for marijuana jumped from 17 percent of all contacts for the 2012 and 2013 school years to one in four last school year. Alcohol and other drugs lagged far behind in police calls.

    While those numbers are up, the 3,147 marijuana suspensions in the last school year still represent only 1 percent of Colorado’s public school population.

    But the numbers also show some kids are starting to smoke or ingest marijuana at very young ages.

    One-seventh of the offenses recorded last year involved middle school children, and prosecutors say some children start smoking pot as young as 11 years old.

    The new Division of Criminal Justice numbers from last school year show 368 total incidents of all types at elementary schools, with 13 percent involving marijuana. At middle schools, 18 percent of the total 1,809 incidents involved pot, as did 30 percent of the total 4,118 incidents at high schools.

    A study finalized in March from the Institute of Cannabis Research at Colorado State University-Pueblo includes a look at attitudes and perceptions of high school students in communities that since 2014 have opened recreational pot stores, such as Pueblo, and those that have not, including Colorado Springs.

    Conclusions are that students in Colorado communities that permit recreational dispensaries used more cannabis and thought marijuana was less harmful and less wrong than high school students in communities that did not allow recreational pot stores.

    The study offers this as a possible explanation: “The high school students mirror the behavior and perceptions of the adult population of their communities.”

    The findings were surprising, said Rick Kreminski, institute director and executive director of research and sponsored programs at CSU-Pueblo, “not because there’s a difference between students in communities that permitted cannabis dispensaries compared with communities that did not, but because there was no statistical change pre- and post-2014,” Kreminski said.

    Student attitudes have remained the same before and after legalization in terms of how harmful students perceive the use of marijuana to be and how wrong they think cannabis use is, Kreminski said.

    Gregory Ecks, director of student discipline services for Colorado Springs School District 11, said it was only logical that students in cities where marijuana has been embraced would find it more acceptable. “Any time something is considered legal and has been discussed as having benefits, you’re going to see kids default to it,” Ecks said. “There’s become an acceptance, and kids are going to experiment.”

     

    Dueling dataConsiderable debate swirls around the question of teen use rates since Colorado legalized recreational marijuana for adults, with stores opening in 2014 following passage of a constitutional amendment in late 2012. One widely quoted state report — the Healthy Kids Colorado Survey — found no significant change in juvenile use from 2013 to 2015.

    Critics of that study say it takes only one snapshot every two years, and some of Colorado’s largest school districts — including those in Jefferson and Douglas counties and most districts in El Paso County — did not take part in 2015.But Mike Van Dyke, chief of environmental epidemiology at the state Department of Public Health and Environment, stands by Healthy Kids’ conclusions. He said fewer middle school students took the survey in 2015 but 16,000 high school students took part, and long-term trends suggest marijuana use by high school students peaked in the 1990s.

    “We believe it’s the best survey available of marijuana use among high school kids,” he said.

    Some law enforcement and school officials say that doesn’t match the reality they see.

    They prefer to cite statistics gathered by Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, an organization of police groups whose goal is to reduce drug use, which shows teen marijuana use increasing over time.

    Its section on marijuana use by youth relies on a survey by a federal agency, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSA), and ignores the Healthy Kids Colorado Survey, although both are incorporated into the overarching federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics.

    The two surveys apparently have at least one question in common: Have you used marijuana over the past 30 days?The most recent Healthy Kids report showed 21 percent of teens said they had used marijuana within the past 30 days, a figure that hasn’t changed much in recent years.

    The SAMSA survey, which cites Colorado as the most prevalent state for youth pot smoking, showed 16.5 percent answered the question positively, but that was an increase from previous years. In 2013-14 it was 15 percent, and in 2008-09 it was only about 10 percent, according to the report.

    Levon Hupfer, an addiction counselor who runs the juvenile diversion program in Adams County, harbors little doubt that more kids are getting stoned at school.

    He calls it tragic that the first state to legalize recreational marijuana is short of adolescent psychiatrists and residential treatment centers for kids with drug troubles.

    “At the end of the day, Colorado kids have lost. Colorado families have lost,” Hupfer said. “We’re failing as a state.”An analysis found that when kids are caught stoned at school, enforcement policies vary greatly. Some districts routinely call police. Others simply send students home.

    In cases where police took action, arrests were infrequent. Statewide, tickets accounted for 97 percent of all penalties and arrests accounted for 3 percent last school year. That was down from 7 percent arrests the year before.

     Eclipsing alcoholBehind all these numbers are the kids.

    He’s a handsome, charming boy with blond-streaked brown hair and a touch of teenage acne. He describes his family as upper middle class.

    He started smoking pot when he was a 15-year-old high school sophomore. Two years later he is hoping to pass Douglas County’s juvenile diversion program.

    It hasn’t been easy. He failed seven urinalysis tests before he was clean enough to enter the program. Relapses followed.

    A friend introduced him to marijuana after his sophomore sweetheart broke his heart.

    “You can forget everything. It helps you sleep at night. You can become loose with the world,” his friend said.

    It worked. He felt he didn’t have a worry in the world. He reveled in strands of deep thought, though he promptly forgot them.

    His habit grew. By the time a police officer spotted marijuana in the backseat of his car, he was smoking an ounce a month of today’s potent strains.

    In a county without dispensaries, he had three illegal dealers. The seized marijuana came from a fellow teenager.

    “I think she had a private grower,” he said.

    Months of counseling persuaded him that he was avoiding uncomfortable feelings and possibly damaging his adolescent brain.

    Finally, he dumped his remaining stash. He put his glass bongs in his car and tossed them out onto some rocks.Then he called his counselor. He has stayed straight for about three months and enjoys feeling clear-headed.

    But at the high school he attends, “almost everyone I know has tried or uses it. Football team, basketball team, cheerleaders,” he said

    His counselor, Seiji Wallis, sees marijuana eclipsing alcohol as a drug problem among juveniles who enter his program.

    “In diversion we have a much higher percentage of clients whose charge is marijuana or paraphernalia,” he said. “I think it’s an enormous problem, almost epidemic.”

     "Pot easy to getAt Westminster High School north of Denver, three of its students — Ezequiel, L.J. and Jesus — gathered in a conference room with their principal to discuss the prevalence of pot use among their friends and classmates.They say it’s easy to get, but they don’t touch it themselves. They’re student athletes, and avoiding marijuana is a requirement for team sports at this 2,400-student school.

    But among them, they know at least 15 classmates who do smoke illegally. And they’re sophomores.

    Sometimes they smell it on a classmate returning from lunch. Sometimes they notice a friend has vanished at lunchtime, skipping afternoon classes.

    “In school I’ve personally had someone ask me if I wanted any,” Jesus said.

    Jesus turned him down, but he didn’t turn him in. “I told him not to do it again.”

    Ezequiel understood why. Snitch once, and “you have a bad reputation for the rest of your high school career,” he said.

    Entering a marijuana dispensary is not as simple as walking into a liquor store. The products are kept behind locked doors, and adult IDs are required to enter. Yet the Westminster High kids agreed that marijuana is easier to get than alcohol — and more popular.

    “Alcohol has been around for a long time,” Ezequiel explained.

    The boys say some comes from homes of parents who smoke and some from young adults who buy from dispensaries to sell smaller amounts on the street.

    Among Colorado high schools, Westminster has a relatively high suspension rate and often involves police. That’s because “we don’t turn a blind eye to it at all,” said principal Kiffany Kiewiet.

    After four years of enforcement efforts, she said, suspensions are finally dropping this year. But it took work. Recreational marijuana “completely changed how you manage a school,” she said.

    Sometimes it’s impossible for kids to avoid reeking of it. About once a week, a student gets suspected of coming to school stoned when “it’s just from whoever brought them to school,” Kiewiet said.

    As a mother, she worries about the age Colorado kids get introduced to marijuana. “Even he knows about it,” she said of her son, “and he’s only 10.”

    Stacey Collis, president of the Colorado Association of School Resource Officers, also believes marijuana use is rising in the schools.

    He also sees a trend toward “highly concentrated marijuana products. We are seeing a lot of that,” he said, adding that, in his view, marijuana is more of a school problem than alcohol. “It’s been a long time since I’ve written an alcohol ticket,” he said.

     

    Police reporting policies differIn Arapahoe County, District Attorney George Brauchler is a Republican and candidate for state attorney general. In Adams County, District Attorney Dave Young is a Democrat.

    On marijuana, they share political views, agreeing it has been a bad deal for kids.

    “There’s an absolute increase” in marijuana use among school children, Young said. “The increase in violations is out of control.”

    Compared to alcohol, “it’s much easier to smoke pot in high school.”

    “This is a burgeoning problem,” Brauchler said. “There are a good number of kids who report their first use at age 11.”

    Statewide, about one-fourth of all marijuana suspensions are accompanied by law enforcement referrals, according to state data.

    How schools actually handle marijuana offenses depends on the district.

    In Jefferson County, 62 percent of marijuana offenses involve some law enforcement penalty.

    “Jeffco has a traditional, straightforward approach to pot,” said Jennifer Gallegos, its manager of student discipline. “They will contact police and let police decide whether to write a ticket.”

    Gallegos previously worked at Thornton High School in Adams County, where she said the district applied a different policy. There, police would be called “for possession, not necessarily for consumption,” she said.

    Thornton High reported 50 marijuana suspensions last year — and no referrals to police. Its principal, Jennifer Skrobela, referred questions about marijuana policies to Adams 12 Five Star Schools spokesman Joe Ferdani.

    He said the absence of law enforcement reports could be attributed partly to the presence of school resource officers, who juggle important issues such as school security along with marijuana use."

     

    ‘A marketing ploy’Marijuana has delivered on its promise to generate a new source of taxes in Colorado.

    Last fiscal year alone, the state reported $211 million in marijuana taxes, and that amount is projected to grow to $307 million in the next three years.

    Public schools are leading recipients of this money. At least $40 million a year, for example, is dedicated to repairing and replacing existing schools. But that merely plugs a small hole in the overall repair and replacement needs identified by the education department, which total $13.9 billion.

    Some education officials say marijuana taxes have created a false public perception that school budget problems have been solved.

    “We did not support legalization for education dollars,” Jeffco Public Schools spokeswoman Diana Wilson said.

    Many in public education felt it was a marketing ploy to get it passed that has skewed the public perception of how much it actually helps.”

    Her district, for example, received a $825,000 grant from marijuana taxes last year to hire school health professionals. Its general fund budget: $697 million.

    While the grant is appreciated, she said, “there are nowhere near enough marijuana tax dollars to make a significant difference in K-12 public education funding shortages.”

    Mason Tvert, co-director of the campaign to legalize recreational pot use in 2012, said education officials asked for marijuana tax money, and it has been used for everything from improving rural schools to school dropout prevention.

    “No one ever claimed the tax money would fill every void in the state budget,” he said, but as of last May, schools alone had reaped $118 million.

    “To say $118 million is no big deal is ridiculous,” he said.

     

    A reason to leave the stateFor thousands of kids, the consequence for smoking pot is a trip to the principal’s office.

    For Aubree Adams’ eldest son, the outcome was more severe.

    She became an anti-marijuana crusader after he tried to kill himself at the age of 15.

    He had swallowed 250 ibuprofen tablets, and she found him “in a bedroom full of vomit,” she said. “He was in a psychiatric ward for five days.”

    At the hospital, she said, he admitted to “dabbing,” a means of ingesting nearly pure THC.

    She was stunned. “What the heck’s a dab?” she asked.

    She and her husband learned he had been hiding a big secret. In Pueblo, he had started using marijuana edibles in the eighth grade. “

    We knew his behavior was changing but didn’t know why,” she said. “It was very apparent he was coming home impaired.”

    His hospitalization was followed by three more before she was able to find an intensive treatment program for him — in Houston.

    “Finally, we have our son back,” but at great emotional and financial costs, she said. “I will be paying this off for a long time.”

    She is giving up on Colorado as a place to live.

    “There are so many parents using that these kids don’t stand a chance,” she said.

    This summer she plans to return to Texas to look for a new home.pot goes to school

    She says her kids aren’t coming back." 



  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -  
    @Plaffelvohfen

    No comments for the below?

    Some of the parents in various parts of the country, have used, and exposed their kids to their illegal and legal drug use.

    Are you a supporter of the weed smoking parents, who use their illegal, and legal weed. around their kids?

    Or might you be a supporter of the kids, and support a kid, who shouldn't have to grow up, with their parents using their illegal, or legal weed, around that kid?

    "You don't address the point, you deflect and evade it... 

    Point is, sugar kills more people each year than cannabis has throughout history... Why are you not petitioning to ban sugar, as it is demonstrably more dangerous?"

    Some of the parents across the country, using, and exposing their kids, to their illegal, and legal weed, isn't more dangerous, than sugar in general is? 

    Where might the truth, in your arguments exist? 
  • PlaffelvohfenPlaffelvohfen 3985 Pts   -  
    @TKDB
    No comments for the below?
    Some of the parents in various parts of the country, have used, and exposed their kids to their illegal and legal drug use....
    Deflection, evasion... It is also fallacious in that it assumes that "smoking" is the only method of consumption for cannabis...  
    isn't more dangerous, than sugar in general is? 
    Statistically no it is not, sugar kills more people each year than cannabis ever did... 
    " Adversus absurdum, contumaciter ac ridens! "
  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -  
    @ZeusAres42

    The weed addicts who have made it a lifestyle career choice, to chase their weed addictions since they were kids, way before weed was legalized.

    "I am not sure how one can make a career out smoking weed? Or did you mean something else when you used the word "career?" 

    The weed addicts, weed addiction, affecting the quality time of their own families.

    So, instead, of prioritizing, and placing their families, their freedom, and their own funds, above their illegal drug choices, and or addictions, they instead, treat and place their illegal drug, and their own addictions/ addiction, over their own families, freedoms, and their own hard earned. funds.

    "Not sure what you mean here. So I am assuming that you think the legalization of marijuana affects quality time with families?"

    "I haven't checked the data on it but I don't think a judicial system made something legal with the intention that by doing so would stop underage users from doing it illegally."





    "COVER STORY: Pot goes to school: With marijuana legal in Colorado, student encounters are rising"

    Colorado’s cultural acceptance of marijuana by adults is seeping into public school classrooms.

    The result is more marijuana-related suspensions of students, more police visits to schools for marijuana incidents, and a greater acceptance of the drug by students who live in communities with recreational dispensaries, two new state studies and a third from a university institute show.

    Twenty times in a typical school day, Colorado kids are reported for illegal marijuana use.

    Statewide, marijuana suspensions jumped 18 percent in the 2016-17 school year, new data from the Colorado Department of Education show.

    A separate study by the state Division of Criminal Justice also suggests the drug has become a growing enforcement problem. Police contacts for marijuana jumped from 17 percent of all contacts for the 2012 and 2013 school years to one in four last school year. Alcohol and other drugs lagged far behind in police calls.

    While those numbers are up, the 3,147 marijuana suspensions in the last school year still represent only 1 percent of Colorado’s public school population.

    But the numbers also show some kids are starting to smoke or ingest marijuana at very young ages.

    One-seventh of the offenses recorded last year involved middle school children, and prosecutors say some children start smoking pot as young as 11 years old.

    The new Division of Criminal Justice numbers from last school year show 368 total incidents of all types at elementary schools, with 13 percent involving marijuana. At middle schools, 18 percent of the total 1,809 incidents involved pot, as did 30 percent of the total 4,118 incidents at high schools.

    A study finalized in March from the Institute of Cannabis Research at Colorado State University-Pueblo includes a look at attitudes and perceptions of high school students in communities that since 2014 have opened recreational pot stores, such as Pueblo, and those that have not, including Colorado Springs.

    Conclusions are that students in Colorado communities that permit recreational dispensaries used more cannabis and thought marijuana was less harmful and less wrong than high school students in communities that did not allow recreational pot stores.

    The study offers this as a possible explanation: “The high school students mirror the behavior and perceptions of the adult population of their communities.”

    The findings were surprising, said Rick Kreminski, institute director and executive director of research and sponsored programs at CSU-Pueblo, “not because there’s a difference between students in communities that permitted cannabis dispensaries compared with communities that did not, but because there was no statistical change pre- and post-2014,” Kreminski said.

    Student attitudes have remained the same before and after legalization in terms of how harmful students perceive the use of marijuana to be and how wrong they think cannabis use is, Kreminski said.

    Gregory Ecks, director of student discipline services for Colorado Springs School District 11, said it was only logical that students in cities where marijuana has been embraced would find it more acceptable. “Any time something is considered legal and has been discussed as having benefits, you’re going to see kids default to it,” Ecks said. “There’s become an acceptance, and kids are going to experiment.”

     

    Dueling dataConsiderable debate swirls around the question of teen use rates since Colorado legalized recreational marijuana for adults, with stores opening in 2014 following passage of a constitutional amendment in late 2012. One widely quoted state report — the Healthy Kids Colorado Survey — found no significant change in juvenile use from 2013 to 2015.

    Critics of that study say it takes only one snapshot every two years, and some of Colorado’s largest school districts — including those in Jefferson and Douglas counties and most districts in El Paso County — did not take part in 2015.But Mike Van Dyke, chief of environmental epidemiology at the state Department of Public Health and Environment, stands by Healthy Kids’ conclusions. He said fewer middle school students took the survey in 2015 but 16,000 high school students took part, and long-term trends suggest marijuana use by high school students peaked in the 1990s.

    “We believe it’s the best survey available of marijuana use among high school kids,” he said.

    Some law enforcement and school officials say that doesn’t match the reality they see.

    They prefer to cite statistics gathered by Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, an organization of police groups whose goal is to reduce drug use, which shows teen marijuana use increasing over time.

    Its section on marijuana use by youth relies on a survey by a federal agency, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSA), and ignores the Healthy Kids Colorado Survey, although both are incorporated into the overarching federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics.

    The two surveys apparently have at least one question in common: Have you used marijuana over the past 30 days?The most recent Healthy Kids report showed 21 percent of teens said they had used marijuana within the past 30 days, a figure that hasn’t changed much in recent years.

    The SAMSA survey, which cites Colorado as the most prevalent state for youth pot smoking, showed 16.5 percent answered the question positively, but that was an increase from previous years. In 2013-14 it was 15 percent, and in 2008-09 it was only about 10 percent, according to the report.

    Levon Hupfer, an addiction counselor who runs the juvenile diversion program in Adams County, harbors little doubt that more kids are getting stoned at school.

    He calls it tragic that the first state to legalize recreational marijuana is short of adolescent psychiatrists and residential treatment centers for kids with drug troubles.

    “At the end of the day, Colorado kids have lost. Colorado families have lost,” Hupfer said. “We’re failing as a state.”An analysis found that when kids are caught stoned at school, enforcement policies vary greatly. Some districts routinely call police. Others simply send students home.

    In cases where police took action, arrests were infrequent. Statewide, tickets accounted for 97 percent of all penalties and arrests accounted for 3 percent last school year. That was down from 7 percent arrests the year before.

     Eclipsing alcoholBehind all these numbers are the kids.

    He’s a handsome, charming boy with blond-streaked brown hair and a touch of teenage acne. He describes his family as upper middle class.

    He started smoking pot when he was a 15-year-old high school sophomore. Two years later he is hoping to pass Douglas County’s juvenile diversion program.

    It hasn’t been easy. He failed seven urinalysis tests before he was clean enough to enter the program. Relapses followed.

    A friend introduced him to marijuana after his sophomore sweetheart broke his heart.

    “You can forget everything. It helps you sleep at night. You can become loose with the world,” his friend said.

    It worked. He felt he didn’t have a worry in the world. He reveled in strands of deep thought, though he promptly forgot them.

    His habit grew. By the time a police officer spotted marijuana in the backseat of his car, he was smoking an ounce a month of today’s potent strains.

    In a county without dispensaries, he had three illegal dealers. The seized marijuana came from a fellow teenager.

    “I think she had a private grower,” he said.

    Months of counseling persuaded him that he was avoiding uncomfortable feelings and possibly damaging his adolescent brain.

    Finally, he dumped his remaining stash. He put his glass bongs in his car and tossed them out onto some rocks.Then he called his counselor. He has stayed straight for about three months and enjoys feeling clear-headed.

    But at the high school he attends, “almost everyone I know has tried or uses it. Football team, basketball team, cheerleaders,” he said

    His counselor, Seiji Wallis, sees marijuana eclipsing alcohol as a drug problem among juveniles who enter his program.

    “In diversion we have a much higher percentage of clients whose charge is marijuana or paraphernalia,” he said. “I think it’s an enormous problem, almost epidemic.”

     "Pot easy to getAt Westminster High School north of Denver, three of its students — Ezequiel, L.J. and Jesus — gathered in a conference room with their principal to discuss the prevalence of pot use among their friends and classmates.They say it’s easy to get, but they don’t touch it themselves. They’re student athletes, and avoiding marijuana is a requirement for team sports at this 2,400-student school.

    But among them, they know at least 15 classmates who do smoke illegally. And they’re sophomores.

    Sometimes they smell it on a classmate returning from lunch. Sometimes they notice a friend has vanished at lunchtime, skipping afternoon classes.

    “In school I’ve personally had someone ask me if I wanted any,” Jesus said.

    Jesus turned him down, but he didn’t turn him in. “I told him not to do it again.”

    Ezequiel understood why. Snitch once, and “you have a bad reputation for the rest of your high school career,” he said.

    Entering a marijuana dispensary is not as simple as walking into a liquor store. The products are kept behind locked doors, and adult IDs are required to enter. Yet the Westminster High kids agreed that marijuana is easier to get than alcohol — and more popular.

    “Alcohol has been around for a long time,” Ezequiel explained.

    The boys say some comes from homes of parents who smoke and some from young adults who buy from dispensaries to sell smaller amounts on the street.

    Among Colorado high schools, Westminster has a relatively high suspension rate and often involves police. That’s because “we don’t turn a blind eye to it at all,” said principal Kiffany Kiewiet.

    After four years of enforcement efforts, she said, suspensions are finally dropping this year. But it took work. Recreational marijuana “completely changed how you manage a school,” she said.

    Sometimes it’s impossible for kids to avoid reeking of it. About once a week, a student gets suspected of coming to school stoned when “it’s just from whoever brought them to school,” Kiewiet said.

    As a mother, she worries about the age Colorado kids get introduced to marijuana. “Even he knows about it,” she said of her son, “and he’s only 10.”

    Stacey Collis, president of the Colorado Association of School Resource Officers, also believes marijuana use is rising in the schools.

    He also sees a trend toward “highly concentrated marijuana products. We are seeing a lot of that,” he said, adding that, in his view, marijuana is more of a school problem than alcohol. “It’s been a long time since I’ve written an alcohol ticket,” he said.

     

    Police reporting policies differIn Arapahoe County, District Attorney George Brauchler is a Republican and candidate for state attorney general. In Adams County, District Attorney Dave Young is a Democrat.

    On marijuana, they share political views, agreeing it has been a bad deal for kids.

    “There’s an absolute increase” in marijuana use among school children, Young said. “The increase in violations is out of control.”

    Compared to alcohol, “it’s much easier to smoke pot in high school.”

    “This is a burgeoning problem,” Brauchler said. “There are a good number of kids who report their first use at age 11.”

    Statewide, about one-fourth of all marijuana suspensions are accompanied by law enforcement referrals, according to state data.

    How schools actually handle marijuana offenses depends on the district.

    In Jefferson County, 62 percent of marijuana offenses involve some law enforcement penalty.

    “Jeffco has a traditional, straightforward approach to pot,” said Jennifer Gallegos, its manager of student discipline. “They will contact police and let police decide whether to write a ticket.”

    Gallegos previously worked at Thornton High School in Adams County, where she said the district applied a different policy. There, police would be called “for possession, not necessarily for consumption,” she said.

    Thornton High reported 50 marijuana suspensions last year — and no referrals to police. Its principal, Jennifer Skrobela, referred questions about marijuana policies to Adams 12 Five Star Schools spokesman Joe Ferdani.

    He said the absence of law enforcement reports could be attributed partly to the presence of school resource officers, who juggle important issues such as school security along with marijuana use."

     

    ‘A marketing ploy’Marijuana has delivered on its promise to generate a new source of taxes in Colorado.

    Last fiscal year alone, the state reported $211 million in marijuana taxes, and that amount is projected to grow to $307 million in the next three years.

    Public schools are leading recipients of this money. At least $40 million a year, for example, is dedicated to repairing and replacing existing schools. But that merely plugs a small hole in the overall repair and replacement needs identified by the education department, which total $13.9 billion.

    Some education officials say marijuana taxes have created a false public perception that school budget problems have been solved.

    “We did not support legalization for education dollars,” Jeffco Public Schools spokeswoman Diana Wilson said.

    Many in public education felt it was a marketing ploy to get it passed that has skewed the public perception of how much it actually helps.”

    Her district, for example, received a $825,000 grant from marijuana taxes last year to hire school health professionals. Its general fund budget: $697 million.

    While the grant is appreciated, she said, “there are nowhere near enough marijuana tax dollars to make a significant difference in K-12 public education funding shortages.”

    Mason Tvert, co-director of the campaign to legalize recreational pot use in 2012, said education officials asked for marijuana tax money, and it has been used for everything from improving rural schools to school dropout prevention.

    “No one ever claimed the tax money would fill every void in the state budget,” he said, but as of last May, schools alone had reaped $118 million.

    “To say $118 million is no big deal is ridiculous,” he said.

     

    A reason to leave the stateFor thousands of kids, the consequence for smoking pot is a trip to the principal’s office.

    For Aubree Adams’ eldest son, the outcome was more severe.

    She became an anti-marijuana crusader after he tried to kill himself at the age of 15.

    He had swallowed 250 ibuprofen tablets, and she found him “in a bedroom full of vomit,” she said. “He was in a psychiatric ward for five days.”

    At the hospital, she said, he admitted to “dabbing,” a means of ingesting nearly pure THC.

    She was stunned. “What the heck’s a dab?” she asked.

    She and her husband learned he had been hiding a big secret. In Pueblo, he had started using marijuana edibles in the eighth grade. “

    We knew his behavior was changing but didn’t know why,” she said. “It was very apparent he was coming home impaired.”

    His hospitalization was followed by three more before she was able to find an intensive treatment program for him — in Houston.

    “Finally, we have our son back,” but at great emotional and financial costs, she said. “I will be paying this off for a long time.”

    She is giving up on Colorado as a place to live.

    “There are so many parents using that these kids don’t stand a chance,” she said.

    This summer she plans to return to Texas to look for a new home.pot goes to school

    She says her kids aren’t coming back." 



    Plaffelvohfen
  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -   edited April 2019
    @Plaffelvohfen

    Maybe, you're afraid, to answer the questions?

    "Deflection, evasion... It is also fallacious in that it assumes that "smoking" is the only method of consumption for cannabis...  
    isn't more dangerous, than sugar in general is? 
    Statistically no it is not, sugar kills more people each year than cannabis ever did... "

    (Some of the parents in various parts of the country, have used, and exposed their kids to their illegal and legal drug use.

    Are you a supporter of the weed smoking parents, who use their illegal, and legal weed. around their kids?

    Or might you be a supporter of the kids, and support a kid, who shouldn't have to grow up, with their parents using their illegal, or legal weed, around that kid?

    "You don't address the point, you deflect and evade it... 

    Point is, sugar kills more people each year than cannabis has throughout history... Why are you not petitioning to ban sugar, as it is demonstrably more dangerous?"

    Some of the parents across the country, using, and exposing their kids, to their illegal, and legal weed, isn't more dangerous, than sugar in general is? 

    Where might the truth, in your arguments exist?)

    Again, where is the truth, in your arguments? 
    Plaffelvohfen
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