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Gina Kaysen Fernandes: Alcohol and marijuana are the two most popular -- and easily accessible -- substances on college campuses, but they're not treated the same under the law. Possessing pot can land you in jail, but drinking too much at a keg party can kill you. "This highlights the absurdity in how we treat these two substances," said Mason Tvert, the co-founder and executive director of the group Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation, or SAFER. Mason has made it his personal mission to debunk the government's anti-marijuana message. "The fact that we have students drinking themselves to death made us realize we had to start some awareness on college campuses," says Mason.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 20,000 Americans die every year as a result of drinking too much. It's a tragedy that Mason narrowly escaped. He nearly died from an alcohol overdose in the summer of 2000. The high school senior guzzled beer all day at a country music festival in Arizona. "Beer was widely available, and my friends gave it to me," recalls Mason. Paramedics rushed him to a nearby hospital, where doctors pumped his stomach. Mason's mother didn't know what happened to her son until the next day, because he was 18 years old and the hospital was not required to notify his parents. "He could have died -- I was so worried about that," said Diane Tvert. As a practicing physical therapist, Diane is supportive of her son's efforts to dispel marijuana myths. "I would so much rather he smoke pot than drink and get behind the wheel of a car," said Diane.
Many like-minded moms share her opinion. "I want my children to grow up to believe that laws are just and rational, and if there's injustice, they should fight it," said Jessica Peck Corry, a Denver-based Republican political strategist. Jessica, a former GOP (grand old party, another name for the Republicans) candidate for state senate, is also a cannabis activist who campaigned for a ballot initiative that would decriminalize marijuana possession in Colorado. "We can no longer afford to wage war on a substance that people can grow in their backyard. It's a war we can't win," says Jessica. As a mother of two young children, Jessica says she plans to have an open dialogue with her kids about drug and alcohol use, even though, she says, "I want to place them in this bubble where I can protect them." Jessica believes that by arming her daughters with accurate information, "they will respect their bodies and make good decisions." These moms insist they're not pushing their kids to abuse drugs, but prefer they choose the lesser of two evils. "Things have gotten so skewed. People look at pot like it's the bogeyman. It's not going to kill you; alcohol can kill you," said Diane.
The statistics on the dangers of alcohol are staggering. Drinking on college campuses led to 1,400 deaths, 500,000 injuries, and 70,000 cases of sexual assault or date rape, according to a 2002 study by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) task force.
The risks associated with getting stoned are fuzzier. No studies have found a direct link between marijuana overdose and death. There's no objective research that finds pot use contributes to violent or aggressive behavior. "They're correct. Typically people don't get violent; I'll be the first to admit that," said Ken Winters, Ph.D., a psychiatry professor at the University of Minnesota-Fairview who specializes in adolescent substance abuse. "But there are plenty of issues with marijuana. It's not a healthy option," says Winters, who believes parents are fooling themselves if they think smoking pot has no long-term consequences. "Prolonged marijuana use appears to increase memory and learning problems," said Winters, who adds, "like tobacco, habitual pot smoking can also lead to cancer and respiratory diseases." Winters also warns there's new research emerging that suggests marijuana can effect your DNA, which has risky implications. He thinks that parents who rationalize marijuana use are being naïve. Instead, Winters recommends we teach our kids to drink responsibly by sticking to the two-drink rule. "It's no fun to be the 'no-fun police,' but that's what you got into, that's part of parenting."
The so-called "Marijuana is Safer" movement is gaining momentum among college students, but is facing a lot of resistance from campus officials. Mason believes the institutions are part of the problem. On one hand, school administrators are trying to promote responsible drinking, yet "universities are fostering this behavior," argues Mason, by allowing beer companies to sponsor campus events like fraternity parties.
A number of well-known party schools are starting to mellow out on pot penalties. Students are adopting SAFER measures at about a dozen college campuses nationwide, including Colorado State University, University of Colorado-Boulder, Florida State University, University of Maryland, University of Texas-Austin, University of Central Florida, and Ohio State University. Students on these campuses are working to make sure the school penalties for marijuana use are no greater than those for alcohol use.
Mason makes his case for SAFER Referendums in a new book hitting shelves this month, titled "Marijuana is Safer, So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?." Mason co-authored the book along with two other prominent legalization advocates, Steve Fox of the Marijuana Policy Project, and Paul Armentano of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).
Marijuana is so easily accessible that one in three Americans have tried it at least once, including the three most recent U.S. presidents. The nation's marijuana business is estimated to rake in $113 billion in annual sales. That's not far behind the alcohol industry, which pockets $130 billion per year. For parents like Jessica, it's the fiscal concerns that make her blood boil. "It costs $30,000 a year to incarcerate a pot dealer, and we spend $10,000 a year to educate a child." Jessica thinks it's time that more mothers come forward "because for so long, others have been exploiting our children by perpetuating this war on drugs in the name of our children."
Gina Kaysen Fernandes is an award-winning documentary producer and a former TV news producer/writer. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and son.
Joined: Dec 01, 2003 Posts: 5762 Location: Christchurch, NZ
Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2009 5:12 pm
Here's another.....
Republican moms for marijuana: ‘Time to legalize is now’ It will take conservatives and women to help turn tide against pot prohibition
By Jessica Peck Corry, For the Colorado Daily
July 26, 2009
http://jessicacorry.com/?p=194
Boulder, Colo. — As a Republican mother committed to legalizing marijuana, political life can be lonely. But while many in my party whisper about the Drug War’s insanity, we should shout it from the rooftop: the time to legalize is now.
Calling for a new approach doesn’t make me a pothead. In fact, while I freely admit to having previously smoked marijuana — as do more than 95 million other Americans, including our last three presidents — I choose not to be an active marijuana user today. While opponents may argue that legalization is all about a bunch of twentysomethings wanting to get high, the debate deserves a more respectful and truthful analysis.
Take medical marijuana. On July 20, Colorado’s Health Board voted down a proposal that would have effectively shuttered the medical marijuana dispensaries serving as crucial sources of legal marijuana across the state. As a result, courageous patients, including AIDS survivor Damien LaGoy, will not have to take to dangerous streets to obtain marijuana. Instead, the state’s nearly 10,000 patients can continue their existing relationships with dispensaries, many of who deliver to the homebound and hold extensive knowledge about the benefits and side effects of specific strains.
To LaGoy, who weighs just 100 pounds, marijuana is the only medicine proven to effectively combat the nausea he faces from his pharmaceutical medications.
Even outside of medical uses, support for outright legalization is skyrocketing. An April ABC News-Washington Post poll concluded that national support stands at 46 percent. Already, there is talk that Colorado may see a legalization bill in 2010. In 2006, voters were asked to legalize small amounts for adult consumption. Forty-four percent said yes — more than the number supporting the GOP’s gubernatorial candidate. With one more vote in every 10, Colorado could become the first state to lift prohibition entirely.
If history is any guide, the crucial female voting bloc, including many Republicans, will provide the political will essential to making this happen. In 1929, it was the Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform successfully leading the charge to end America’s decade-long experiment with alcohol prohibition. While many of these same activists fought just years earlier to forbid booze, they quickly witnessed prohibition’s devastating consequences, including increased violence.
Just four years into the Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform’s repeal efforts, prohibition was over.
Prohibition is a bipartisan creation, lending power to drug cartels and bad public policy. One example: Students convicted of any drug offense can be stripped of all federal financial aid, forcing many out of school and into low-income communities where harsher drugs, including methamphetamine, run rampant. Courageous conservatives across the country, including Texas Congressman Ron Paul, former Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo and former New Mexico Gov. Tim Johnson, have all said yes to legalization.
If we believe that smaller government is better government, we must trust people to choose what to put into their bodies. If we support legalized access to alcohol, cigarettes, and 700-calorie cheeseburgers, we should legalize marijuana — a far less harmful substance.
So what will I tell my kids when they are old enough to contemplate marijuana use? I’ll tell them I hope they make good decisions with their bodies, which are sacred and should be respected. If all goes as planned, I’ll also be able to take them down memory lane, sharing what it was like to have lived under prohibition. How I dream of the sweet day that government finally relinquishing its control, allowing my husband and me to finally parent our children.
Jessica Peck Corry is a policy analyst with the Independence Institute in Golden and a co-founder of Guarding Our Children Against Marijuana Prohibition.
OPINION: We have an odd belief in this country that you can solve social problems not by changing social conditions, but by changing laws. Thus we brought in an anti- smacking law out of disgust at the abuse of our children, who are seen by many people as, at the very best, human pets. Unfortunately the same people neglect their animal pets, and probably abuse them as well. Why not? They abuse themselves too.
There are many ways of being abusive, and we're past masters of all of them. I use the collective "we" here because we are a community, whether we feel like we are or not, and abusive families belong to us. Their problems are our problems, their failures our failures, and isolating and stigmatising them doesn't help their kids in the long run. To solve this problem - violence against children - we'd need to be a community that valued children and families highly in the first place, which I'm not sure we do.
Now we plan to raise the driving age, so that young drivers will be less lethal on the roads. I'm not against this; I'd rather save lives too; but it's interesting to think about why we had such a young driving age in the first place. People last century - like my grandmother - left school at 14, and started work. They were well drilled in a basic education in which they were not encouraged to think creatively, still less to think of ever attending university, and were expected to take part usefully in society.
There was no question of being disruptive in the classroom: they were beaten if they were, and their own families would have agreed with the proposition that teachers, not students, should be in charge. Because they came from big families, kids had responsibilities at a young age, caring for younger brothers and sisters under the watchful eye of busy parents, and helping with the chores. They had to take responsibility, be beaten, or leave; there was no question of sitting down to discuss their feelings about it. Harsh but straightforward.
We must have had a different idea of what childhood is, because people then entered the world young and had to make their way in it, often living with strangers, if they were in service, or working on other people's farms. Nobody would have tolerated their drinking or taking drugs. They'd have been sacked, and there would have been no sympathetic welfare system to pay them for doing nothing.
If they lost their job, their parents would have had no sympathy for them either. They couldn't afford to keep them. A year after leaving school, and having adjusted to the working world, teenagers could get a driver's licence. That made them more useful to employers, and because we were still a rural society, being able to drive soon became essential, as it still is for rural teenagers. They will now be penalised by the proposed law change for the sake of urban brats, like boy racers, who have behaved irresponsibly.
The issue here is as much what we've allowed teenagers to become, as whether they should be driving. We lowered the drinking age, after all, though most of us predicted that would end in disaster: it was obvious that once 18-year-olds could buy booze, younger teenagers would get their hands on it easily, and then teenagers would drive drunk, since adults do.
And if I find our attitude to recreational drugs confusing, so must kids. With so much pressure to legalise marijuana, the effect surely has to be that young kids suspect it's not all that serious to use it - yet we know very well that it impairs judgment every bit as much as alcohol does.
Then there's the party pill industry we've allowed to develop. That endorses the idea that you have to be high on something to be enjoying yourself, an idea we legitimised when we made it legitimate. What did we think the result would be? Safe teenage drivers? Responsible kids?
I don't advocate a return to the brutal clarities of the past, but if we wonder why teenagers behave the way they do, surely we should ask ourselves.
- snip -
"That was a searing epiphany," Honoré concludes. "I didn't like what I saw." He now writes and lectures about the many fruits of slowing down, citing research that suggests the brain in its relaxed state is more creative, makes more nuanced connections and is ripe for eureka moments. "With children," he argues, "they need that space not to be entertained or distracted. What boredom does is take away the noise ... and leave them with space to think deeply, invent their own game, create their own distraction. It's a useful trampoline for children to learn how to get by."
- snip -
I am not supporting or encouraging adolescent pot use. I am pointing out the argument "your brain is still being wired" as fundamental criticism of adolescent pot experimentation has flaws. Not only does a host of other arguably far more damaging and common substances such as sugars and fats affect the adolescent developing brain, excellent research identifies "heavy pot use at young age" - as opposed to youthful experimentation - leads to least successful life outcomes, including worst of them all, police attention/criminal conviction.
So why is it still illegal, stigmatised, swept under the carpet again and again, unless .... political brownie points are being scored in the pursuit of what, exactly? Despite the hand-wringing about adolescent alcohol use the fact remains that social norms steer them firmly towards consumption of that very toxic substance.
On the other hand, for example, Judge Francis Young of the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration, USA) in 1988 stated that "Marijuana in it's natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man". ie. it can not kill you. It is physically impossible to die from an overdose, you can not consume enough. Water can kill you if you consume too much, and you can, unlike cannabis. The correct fundamental comment on adolescent pot experimentation should be that prohibition causes far more societal and individual harm than cannabis ever will. If people can be trusted with alcohol, they can be trusted with cannabis.
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