Marijuana, Legalization and the Workplace

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Marijuana, Legalization and the Workplace

This year American workers tested positive for illicit drugs at the highest rate in 12 years with marijuana positivity increasing 75%. Being in construction and manufacturing business for over 40 years I know well the challenges of finding, training, and maintaining an effective workforce. There is also the demand for creating and maintaining a safe workplace. None of these business demands are assisted by having marijuana legalized.

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Dangers of Marijuana Experienced Firsthand→

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Dangers of Marijuana Experienced Firsthand

I recently finished my residency in emergency medicine and began to practice in Pueblo, Colorado. I grew up there, and I was excited to return home. However, when I returned home, the Pueblo I once knew had drastically changed. Where there were once hardware stores, animal feed shops, and homes along dotted farms, I now found marijuana shops—and lots of them. As of January 2016, there were 424 retail marijuana stores in Colorado compared with 202 McDonald’s restaurants.1

These stores are not selling the marijuana I had seen in high school. Multiple different types of patients are coming into the emergency department with a variety of unexpected problems such as marijuana-induced psychosis, dependence, burn injuries, increased abuse of other drugs, increased homelessness and its associated problems, and self-medication with marijuana to treat their medical problems instead of seeking appropriate medical care.

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Marijuana and Alcohol DUI's Differ By Time of Day

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Marijuana and Alcohol DUI's Differ By Time of Day

Marijuana and DUI fatal crashes by time of day are startlingly different. Marijuana fatal crashes dominates daytime populated rush hour traffic -  before and after standard work hours. For 11 consecutive daytime one-hour time periods, 6am to 5pm, the percentage of marijuana crash fatalities exceeded DUI crash fatalities. DUI crashes dominate the evening hours and occur during some of the least populated road times. For 8 consecutive evening time periods, 8pm to 4am, the percentage of DUI crashes exceeded marijuana crashes.

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Drugged driving eclipses drunken driving in tests of motorists killed in crashes

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Drugged driving eclipses drunken driving in tests of motorists killed in crashes

Of the drivers who tested positive for drugs, more than a third had used marijuana and more than 9 percent had taken amphetamines.

“As drunken driving has declined, drugged driving has increased dramatically, and many of today’s impaired drivers are combining two or more substances,” said Ralph S. Blackman, president of the foundation, a nonprofit founded and funded by a group of distillers.

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In Colorado, It's Still The Wild West For Home-Grown Marijuana→

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In Colorado, It's Still The Wild West For Home-Grown Marijuana

Since 2014, when Colorado’s legal, recreational marijuana sales began, Rist Canyon residents say they’ve seen the arrival of a handful of new neighbors. These newcomers buy a plot of land, and rather than build a house and move in, they put up greenhouses or start planting marijuana right in the ground.  

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Don’t let Big Marijuana prioritize profits over public safety

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Don’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.

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Countering the Threat of Legalized Marijuana: A Blueprint for Federal, Community, and Private Action

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Countering 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.

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White House: Feds will step up marijuana law enforcement

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White 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.

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What the national drug crisis requires

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What 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

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National study finds little proof of pot’s medical benefits→

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National study finds little proof of pot’s medical benefits

Marijuana advocates tout the drug and its compounds as therapeutic for everything from treating glaucoma to stopping nightmares. But a new systematic review of more that 10,700 scientific studies conducted by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine found verifiable benefits for only two disorders—chronic pain and the nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy. 

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Nearing the Falls in America’s Drug Crisis→

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Nearing the Falls in America’s Drug Crisis

Never before in American history has our country faced a drug abuse, drug crime, and drug overdose crisis of the magnitude now confronting our society. Last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), announced that more than 50,000 Americans last year died from drug overdoses. That is a surge of death around us.

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Proposition 64: New law should be cause for broad alarm

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Proposition 64: New law should be cause for broad alarm

It is clear that California is no longer the Golden State. California does poorly in education and in measures of children’s well-being. With only 12 percent of the nation’s population, California has 33 percent of those on the nation’s welfare rolls. Homelessness and drug use are skyrocketing and the two are connected. None of these issues will be improved with more pot commercialization and use. Other problems of the state will be made worse as well.

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Prop 64 Wins - Public Health, Safety and California Kids Lose

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Prop 64 Wins - Public Health, Safety and California Kids Lose

“This is the worst possible message we could send to our citizens, children and other states,” warns Scott Chipman, Southern California Chair of CALM. “For at least a generation California like Colorado will be burdening their communities and children with the scourge that is marijuana. The negative impacts of legalization and commercialization will be regular headlines in the news and in the lives of Californians.” 

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5 Former DEA Administrators urge Governor Brown to Oppose Prop 64

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5 Former DEA Administrators urge Governor Brown to Oppose Prop 64

As former heads of the Drug Enforcement Administration, we write to ask you, the State’s highest level and most visible political leader, to take a position on Proposition 64 before the election next Tuesday. For the reasons set out below, we urge you to oppose Prop 64. Your voice, Governor, is critical.

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Californians Call on Governor Brown To take An Oppose Position on Prop 64

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Californians Call on Governor Brown To take An Oppose Position on Prop 64

It is curious that Governor Brown said while being interviewed by “Meet the Press,” March 2, 2014, “The problem with anything, a certain amount is OK.  But there is a tendency to go to extremes, and all of a sudden, if there is advertising and legitimacy, how many people can get stoned and still have a great State.”  Carla Lowe, Founder, Co-chair, Citizens Against Legalizing Marijuana (CALM)said, “He then turned his back on Californians 4 days later and accepted over $108,000 from Sean Parker and his wife, both financial backers of Prop 64.  We believe he further put California in jeopardy, maybe forever, by allowing it to become the world’s largest producer of marijuana by not demanding enforcement of federal law.

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Why Legalizing Marijuana Would Be a Big Mistake

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Why Legalizing Marijuana Would Be a Big Mistake

The marijuana of today comes in numerous forms; smoked, vaporized, butters, waxes, oils, and edibles.  What they all have in common is their THC potency (THC is the psychoactive, intoxicating and addictive cannabinoid in marijuana)  which is 10-40x greater than the marijuana of the 1960’s.  Today’s marijuana has been genetically engineered to maximize THC and minimize CBD (the non-psychoactive, non-intoxicating, non-addictive; cannabinoid with potentially therapeutic value).   

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