January 19, 2014:\u00a0 President Obama opines that marijuana is \u201cnot very different from cigarettes\u201d and no more \u201cdangerous\u201d than alcohol, just \u201ca waste of time\u201d and \u201cnot very healthy.\u201d Maybe like super-sized drinks?<\/p>\n
January 23:\u00a0 Attorney General (AG) Holder says marijuana money should have legal access to the American banking system, and that he would make way for regulations to protect what is, under federal law, illegal money laundering.\u00a0 Arrival of the Mad Hatter?<\/p>\n
January 25:\u00a0 The \u201cMaryland Mall shooter\u201d kills three, and police soon discover he was using marijuana and needed mental health support, by his own admission. Shadows of Columbine?<\/p>\n
January 29:\u00a0 The AG testifies before the U.S. Senate, refusing to condemn pot legalization and adding that \u201call drugs are dangerous,\u201d lumping alcohol in with Schedule One narcotics. Curiouser and curiouser \u2026<\/p>\n
Here are the incontrovertible facts:\u00a0 Marijuana is a Schedule One narcotic, meaning a drug assessed as possessing \u201chigh potential for abuse,\u201d based on science.\u00a0 The drug has put hundreds of thousands in treatment over the past ten years, accelerated emergency room incidents according to the Centers for Disease Control, and raised levels of drugged driving, domestic abuse and marijuana-associated crime, according to State and Federal criminal justice databases.<\/p>\n
Since the early 1980s, forward thinking policy makers, parents, teachers, doctors, nurses and caring experts have pointed out, in hundreds of studies, how devastating marijuana addiction is. Nor have we rounded some new corner, where the danger is falling.\u00a0 According to the Columbia University Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA), marijuana potency jumped 175 percent since 2006.\u00a0 The jump has accelerated both marijuana use and addiction, together with hospital Emergency Room (ER) incidents and voluntary treatment admissions.\u00a0 And CASA has long observed that the ratio of addicts to first users is roughly one in eight.\u00a0 So, a little math:\u00a0 If the President\u2019s and AG\u2019s remarks have encouraged only eight million young Americans in our 315 million-person Nation to try pot, they have just condemned another million young Americans to addiction.\u00a0 Nor is this addiction easy to shake off.\u00a0 Those addicted are trapped, which \u2013 at best \u2013 produces a costly new stream of treatment cases, at worst a rise in overdoses and grieving parents.<\/p>\n
The rise in marijuana addiction correlates with other trends.\u00a0 Friends of the President\u2019s are among the wealthy promoters of this drug\u2019s abuse.\u00a0 Billionaire financier George Soros, a friend of this White House, has contributed millions to marijuana legalization.\u00a0 Meantime, other trends demonstrate where this rabbit hole really leads.\u00a0 Over the past seven years, America has witnessed a 492 percent increase in the proportion of teen medical admissions for marijuana addiction, according to CASA.\u00a0 The President ignores these numbers, and the devastation they portend, while pouring billions into public messaging against obesity and cigarette companies.<\/p>\n
How about a few more trends?\u00a0 The marijuana spike has led to rising medical and social costs, challenging families and professionals with disinformation as they battle associated domestic abuse, mental health issues and drug-influenced crimes.\u00a0\u00a0 The Justice Department has linked poly-drug use to four in five domestic abuse cases, while the President\u2019s own Drug Czar released a 2013 nationwide study showing that \u201c80 percent of adult males [incarcerated for non-drug crimes] tested positive for at least one illegal drug, [and] marijuana was the most commonly detected drug.\u201d\u00a0 It was \u201cfound in 54 percent of those arrested.\u201d<\/p>\n
Between 2009 and 2011, there was a shocking 19 percent rise in ER visits tied to marijuana according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), while related overall drug overdose rates \u2013 with marijuana a major accelerant \u2013 rose for the eleventh straight year to more than 38,000.\u00a0 Against this backdrop, how can anyone justify indifference?\u00a0 How can the President speak of compassion and leadership to those 72,000 heartbroken parents, many of whom lost a child that began their drug addiction with marijuana?\u00a0 Or think about it this way:\u00a0 The annual numbers of children who die from drug abuse in one year is now five times the Nation\u2019s total losses in both Afghanistan and Iraq.\u00a0 We pulled out of both those wars, but our kids still die of drug addiction in combat numbers.<\/p>\n
Another CDC fact:\u00a0 The nearly 500-percent increase in marijuana treatment cases is in stark contrast to a more than 50-percent reduction of admissions for other abused substances.\u00a0 In other words, pot is now outpacing all other addictions.<\/p>\n
Finally, peripheral impacts from increased social passivity include reduced test scores and graduation rates for marijuana users, increased family dissolution for adult users, increases non-overdose medical incidents\u00a0 (e.g. lung, heart and brain issues), and birth defects associated with\u00a0 pot addiction.\u00a0 Are these not reason enough to throw the brakes on, Mr. President?\u00a0 The addiction curve for marijuana is already steep and dangerous.\u00a0 How about a public correction of the record?\u00a0 How about siding with us \u2013 just everyday Americans who think addiction, overdoses, drugged driving and drug-related crime are bad things?\u00a0 How about siding with the country\u2019s parents, kids, doctors, nurses, social workers, law enforcement officers and \u201cthe average folks\u201d you so often talk about?\u00a0 How about public opposition to pot, instead of validating illegal narcotics abuse?\u00a0 In short:\u00a0 Why don\u2019t you help us, Mr. President, instead of working against us?<\/p>\n
Charles, former assistant secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement for Secretary of State Colin Powell, has worked for more than 20 years on drug prevention, addiction treatment and criminal justice issues.\u00a0 He now heads The Charles Group LLC in Washington D.C.<\/p>\n
Source http:\/\/thehill.com\/blogs\/congress-blog\/healthcare\/197776-presidential-disconnect-on-pot#ixzz2slGnWusO\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 8th Feb 2014<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" January 19, 2014:\u00a0 President Obama opines that marijuana is \u201cnot very different from cigarettes\u201d and no more \u201cdangerous\u201d than alcohol, just \u201ca waste of time\u201d and \u201cnot very healthy.\u201d Maybe like super-sized drinks? January 23:\u00a0 Attorney General (AG) Holder says marijuana money should have legal access to the American banking system, and that he would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,104,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drug-use-various-effects","category-political-sector","category-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}