With such overwhelming support, one could assume that legalization has clear benefits for everyone. That assumption is not only costly, it could prove to be dead wrong.
Read MoreStay in the know with the latest on our fight against the legalization of marijuana
Have an article that you would like us to post? Share it on our Facebook page!
City Council Supports Big Marijuana, Ignores Communities, Mayor, and Police Chief
/
6 councilmembers ignored the police chief’s and mayors concerns. They ignored the facts and figures from Colorado showing the true cost of that state’s marijuana industry. They ignored the recommendation of their own city staff. Six councilmembers ignored their own constituents, the regular people from underserved communities who took the time off from their jobs and from their families to speak out at City Hall.
Read MoreNational Survey Shows Soaring Marijuana Use Among All Americans 12 and Older; Heavy Use Also on the Rise→
/
The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) also found the number of daily or near-daily users of marijuana in 2016 doubled compared to the number of heavy users about a decade ago. Use rose significantly among age groups 12 and up, 18 and up, and 26 and up. Almost twice as many 12-17-year-olds are using pot as compared to cigarettes on a past-month basis. And among those 18 and over, there has been a significant jump in the percent of marijuana users who are unemployed as compared to 2015.
Read MoreTraffic fatalities linked to marijuana are up sharply in Colorado. Is legalization to blame?→
/
The number of drivers involved in fatal crashes in Colorado who tested positive for marijuana has risen sharply each year since 2013, more than doubling in that time, federal and state data show. A Denver Post analysis of the data and coroner reports provides the most comprehensive look yet into whether roads in the state have become more dangerous since the drug’s legalization.
Read MoreWhat Does it Take to Admit the Failures of Legalizing Pot?→
/
Marijuana labs — sometimes called hash oil labs or BHO labs — were exploding before legalization, but the problem grew bigger after marijuana possession became legal in July 2015. The number of burn victims rose from 7 to 30 within a year. Today marijuana users can buy“wax” or “dabs” from licensed dispensaries, but it is cheaper to make at home using butane. Unlicensed chemists who run the marijuana labs may be trying to sell their own supply to undercut the legal market. Or they be so addicted that risking death is not enough to stop them.
Read MoreLegal weed isn't living up to all of its promises. We need to shut it down→
/
Today, a growing class of well-heeled lobbyists intent on commercializing marijuana are doing everything they can to sell legal weed as a panacea for every contemporary challenge we face in America. Over the past several years we've been barraged by claims that legal pot can cure the opioid crisis, cure cancer, eliminate international drug cartels, and even solve climate change.
Read MoreThese college students lost access to legal pot — and started getting better grades→
/
The most rigorous study yet of the effects of marijuana legalization has identified a disturbing result: College students with access to recreational cannabis on average earn worse grades and fail classes at a higher rate.
Read MoreA Teenager’s Lament→
/
There is no limit to the genre of students which teen drug use has effected- the popular and the unpopular, the athletes as well as members of the robotics club, the dancers, the singers, the freshmen and the seniors– everyone is doing it. Ironically, even the leaders of my school’s ‘Students Against Destructive Decisions’ (SADD) are getting “turnt” on the weekends. While I would consider this to be a major form of hypocrisy, perhaps the bigger problem is that they don’t realize how destructive some of their decisions are…
Read MoreLegalized marijuana turns Colorado resort town into homeless magnet→
/
Caleb Preston, a store manager in a gift shop and a former “street entertainer,” said the homeless and panhandling issue in Durango has gotten out of hand since the state legalized marijuana.
“Just this year there has been a major influx of people between 20 to 30 who are just hanging out on the streets,” Preston said. “The problem is while many are pretty mellow, there are many more who are violent.”
Read MoreDon't Let Anyone Tell You Youth Marijuana Use Hasn't Gone Up in States Like Colorado
/
Despite claims to the contrary by Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, and other officials, the nation's only representative sample of people in U.S households released special Colorado state data finding increases in marijuana use.
Colorado past-month marijuana use among 12-to-17 year-olds saw a significant increase, from 9.82% to 12.56%, according to the most recent year-by-year comparison looking at pre-legalization data.
The National Survey on Drug Use and Health data also found that Colorado teens and adults use marijuana at a higher rate than the rest of the country. Colorado legalized marijuana in 2012 and implemented legal marijuana stores in 2014. At the same time, the sales of alcohol shows a slight increase.
Read MoreThis Is Your Teenager's Brain on Pot→
/
Liz, now 18, who started smoking weed regularly at the age of 12 as a coping mechanism, as she puts it, for the upset she felt around her parents’ divorce.
“At first I kind of just felt, like, very… relaxed, spacey,” she says. “After a while, after I started using day after day, I kind of just felt more lethargic. No motivation for anything. Very apathetic. And I felt, like, a lot of paranoia along with that.” By her early teens, Liz had developed a pot habit — not to mention an eating disorder and a self-harming problem — severe enough to land her in a residential treatment program, the Newport Academy.
“I realized that I had a problem with marijuana when I found that I couldn’t be comfortable when I was sober,” she tells Yahoo, adding that the softening marijuana laws across the country are sending what feels to her like “a mixed message” about the safety of weed.
Read MoreTeens tend to think marijuana use is no big deal, but they’re wrong.→
/
While teenagers might be binge-drinking less and having less sex than the previous generation did, marijuana use among teens, which had declined from the late 1990s through the mid-to-late 2000s, is on the rise again. This is a problem because, despite our culture’s increasingly casual attitudes toward pot, research suggests that marijuana use can damage the developing teen brain.
If kids are behaving more conservatively than their parents did as teens and engaging in fewer risky or harmful activities, why are they smoking more pot? Why do 60 percent of high school seniors say they think marijuana is safe? And why are more of them using marijuana than smoking cigarettes or drinking? How have our kids gotten the idea that pot is no big deal?
Read MoreDon’t let Big Marijuana prioritize profits over public safety
/
Simply put, the current fragmented patchwork of laws governing marijuana in states is unsustainable. Despite the oft-repeated refrain that marijuana enforcement is an issue of “states’ rights,” the consequences of legalization are not confined by geographic borders. Since Colorado legalized, marijuana has streamed into neighboring states and emboldened drug trafficking organizations there. In fact, in Nebraska and Oklahoma, the inflow of marijuana trafficking has been so dramatic that the states sued Colorado. Interstate drug tourism is thriving, with companies in states with legal pot advertising across state lines and online.
Read MoreIt’s not ‘just’ marijuana
/
That father wanted something I could not give him, beyond a hug and shared tears, and consideration for his agony. He wanted the moment back. The earlier moment. He wanted his son back.
That was almost 20 years ago. The nation had lost 14,000 kids to overdoses that year. Congress wrote and passed the Drug Free Communities Act of 1997, Mental Health Parity Act of 1996, the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, and federal anti-drug trafficking laws, including against trafficking marijuana. And drug abuse went down — markedly.
Read MoreCountering the Threat of Legalized Marijuana: A Blueprint for Federal, Community, and Private Action
/
Recent reporting indicates that the Federal government will be taking a more serious approach to the marijuana threat and the enforcement of our nation’s drug laws. This is a welcome and long-overdue development, as the state-level legalization of marijuana is bringing with it significant and foreseeable costs. Decades of experience have taught us the damage that accompanies drug use; embarking on a legalization course that assuredly leads to higher levels of prevalence will increase the damage greatly as use broadens and intensifies.
Read MoreWhite House: Feds will step up marijuana law enforcement
/
CALM is encouraged by the announcement by Sean Spicer that the new administration is going to take a look at the issues related to marijuana use in America. We are also encouraged by their apparent recognition that the blossoming opioid addiction crisis and drug use at large has a connection to the expansion of marijuana use.
Read MoreWhat the national drug crisis requires
/
Extraordinary times we live in — not least because supposedly responsible people are promoting drug abuse, which everyone knows cascades into addiction, drug-crime, overdoses — that are killing us. So what gives? No one wants to stand up and take responsibility for saying — stop this madness, and fix the crisis. America’s greatness depends on a lot of things — and stopping the rolling, expansive, destructive drug crisis is one
Read MoreWhen the drug crisis hits home
/
No one wants to read about drug addiction, abuse, overdose numbers and young death. Why should they? Why should anyone who is steady, healthy and cogent enough to be combing a newspaper, or scanning news on their iPhone care much about someone who — all the world assumes — lost their own future, made avoidable mistakes? Not my lane. Not my worry. Not my world, right? Wrong.
Read MoreClaims about marijuana and pregnancy
/
Recently, I was pointed to some “pro-marijuana” websites that essentially claim that smoking cannabis was safe during pregnancy. I was flabbergasted. Marijuana and pregnancy (or while breastfeeding) is a bad combination–it is probably not very safe to the fetus or neonate. That’s very clear.
Read MoreWhy Pot Legalization Isn't A "Freedom Issue"→
/
The drug cartels enjoy vast new markets with every legalization vote. Are the drug cartels weaker? To the contrary, they are not only doing amazingly well, they are now happy to satisfy the exploding new demand for heroine.
Read More