Another sad story of loss brought to us by the marijuana industry.

By Aubree Adams

I absolutely loved living in Colorado.

Family-oriented Pueblo is the state’s best-kept secret. Lake Pueblo, Pueblo Mountain Park, and Devil’s Canyon are perfect places to hike. We lived in an old Craftsman home in the historic district, with a beautiful garden and wonderful neighbors. I felt like I was living in a dream.

And then legalized marijuana came, and everything changed. It’s taken nearly a decade for Colorado’s elected leaders to understand the damage pot is doing to our children. I saw it years ago.

My eldest son entered eighth grade in 2014, the year recreational marijuana stores opened in Colorado. Soon, his behavior changed. He became irrational and repeated things that didn’t make sense. I dismissed it as adolescent mood swings. He’d just broken up with a girlfriend. That’s all it was, I told myself.

By his freshman year, I realized he was using marijuana. I was still in denial, though, until he attacked his younger brother and then tried to kill himself. The hospital treated him and sent him home. A few days later, when it was clear he was still suicidal, I took him back to the emergency room. Don’t worry, they told me. It’s just marijuana. 

Marijuana is a serious drug

Eventually, my son told me he was dabbing, which I had never heard of. A dab (or wax or shatter) is a highly concentrated form of THC, marijuana’s active ingredient. It’s heated and smoked, delivering an instant, overwhelming high. Crack weed, my son called it. He knew it was making him crazy. He wanted to quit, but addiction had him firmly in its grip.

And yes, he was addicted. Addiction is a pediatric disease. In 9 out of 10 cases, it originates with drug or alcohol use before age 21. Marijuana, which has been linked to mental illness and psychosis in teens and young adults, slowly takes away your humanity. That’s what it did to my son, who turned to running the streets with homeless people. He had no trouble finding people to feed his addiction in return for selling their legally home-grown marijuana. 

I quit working, making it my full-time job to save my son. I soon found out that getting treatment wasn’t easy. Beds were full. Officials minimized marijuana's addictiveness.

I found a highly regarded treatment center in Utah; they required $36,000 up front that I didn't have. Finally, I found a place in San Diego that helped restore his health. He regained confidence and looked good. In the meantime, I had learned about a recovery community in Houston, where host families provide positive peer support. My son got better when he left Colorado, so I moved him there in 2016. My other son, who had developed post-traumatic stress disorder, and I followed in 2018.

Rein in this monster

Sadly, my story isn’t unique. Families across Colorado have experienced the same heartbreak and worse. More and more, marijuana is implicated in teen suicides. From 2014 to 2018, marijuana was present in nearly one-third of teen suicides. Pot is taking our children from us.

That’s why a bipartisan legislature this year passed a bill that begins to rein in this monster. The bill:

► Authorizes a study on the effects of high-potency THC products on the developing brain and how to keep those products away from teens. These unbiased experts will make a recommendation for next steps to the legislature.

► Requires doctors issuing medical marijuana recommendations to consider the person's mental health history; 

► Orders a report on hospital discharge data when marijuana use is likely;

► Directs coroners to screen for THC in non-natural deaths;

► Reduces the amount an 18-year-old medical card user can purchase in a single day. This closes a loophole that could be exploited to stock up on marijuana concentrates, which they sell to their younger friends. 

It’s a baby step, but it’s significant that the state that pioneered marijuana legalization is finally recognizing there are harmful consequences.

We can’t keep going down this road. We can’t keep sacrificing our children on the altar of pot. Big Marijuana promotes high-potency, addictive concentrates with no proof they are safe for anyone. Colorado’s commission, when it reviews all the research already done, will confirm that this product is dangerous to children and much too easy for them to get.

Maybe lives will be saved. Maybe other states will be warned against following Colorado’s lead Maybe no more families will have to endure the hell that mine has.

But it comes too late for me and my oldest son. He started using again. I haven’t seen him in a year.

Aubree Adams is director of Every Brain Matters. She is the parent coordinator for a Houston recovery community, where she lives with her youngest son and two dogs.

Are scientists missing the forest for the trees on youth marijuana use?→

Are scientists missing the forest for the trees?
Last week, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study by DM Anderson and colleagues, scientists from universities in Montana, Spain, and San Diego, California. The study finds that legalization does not increase adolescent marijuana use. The researchers analyzed the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began conducting in 1991.

Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS)
YRBSS collects data from high school students every two years about behaviors that contribute to unintentional injuries and violence, sexual behaviors related to unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, alcohol and other drug use, tobacco use, unhealthy dietary behaviors, and inadequate physical activity. Not all states participate in YRBSS, and those that do participate periodically, although in the 2019 YRBSS all but five states did so. Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington State have never participated in YRBSS. The survey asks three questions about marijuana: ever use, current use, and what age students were when they started using marijuana. It began asking about vapor product use in 2015, but never asks what students are vaping.

So far as these limited data are concerned, the researchers’ findings seem true. But two other national surveys show us something more.

The National Survey on Drug Abuse/National Survey on Drug Use and Health
The National Survey on Drug Abuse is the oldest. It began in 1971 and was financed by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Its first two surveys were done under the auspices of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse. It began publishing annual data in 1976 and was transferred to the newly created Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) in 1992. Technological innovations enabled the survey to be redesigned in 1999 and its name was changed to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) in 2002. However, the redesign of the renamed survey resulted in an inability to compare its results with findings from the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse.

The NSDUH collects data annually on the use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and other drugs from adolescents (ages 12-17), young adults (ages 18-25), and older adults (ages 26 and older). It combines two years of data to report drug use among these age groups by state but unfortunately not before 2002. RTI is the contractor responsible for administering this survey, which also collect data on the mental health of Americans.

Monitoring the Future (MTF)
The third national survey is Monitoring the Future (MTF), which began in 1975. Financed by NIDA, MTF is the only survey that can give us continuous data from 1976 through today. It collects data about the lifetime, past-year, past-month, and daily use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and other drug by students in grade 12. It added students in grades 8 and 10 in 1990. In 2015, MTF began asking about vaping and two years later asked specifically what kids were vaping – nicotine, marijuana, or just flavoring. Unfortunately, it does not report its data by state. The University of Michigan Institute for Social Research administers this survey.

The chart above shows that drug use among high school seniors peaked in 1978-1979. A 1977 study called Highlights from the National Survey on Drug Abuse estimates that in 1962, less than 2 percent of the US population and less than 1 percent of adolescents had ever tried an illicit drug. Over the next 16 years, “ever-tried” use rose among seniors to 60.4 percent, while 50.8 percent of seniors used the drug in the past year, 37.1 percent used it in the past month, and 10.7 percent used it daily. What drove that astonishing escalation in use among 18-year-olds?

Decriminalization and Drug Paraphernalia
The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) formed in the early 70s and initiated a movement to decriminalize marijuana. Decriminalization then was defined as reducing criminal penalties for possessing an ounce or less of marijuana, enough for personal use. In 1973, NORML persuaded Oregon to decriminalize marijuana and in rapid succession over the next five years,10 more states decriminalized. By 1978, eleven states had reduced marijuana penalties to that of a traffic ticket. Along with decriminalization emerged the drug paraphernalia industry called by some “little learning centers for young drug abusers.” Head shops (shops for “heads” as the industry called drug users) selling child-appealing toys and gadgets to enhance drug use opened in urban and suburban communities across the US throughout the 70s, leaving no doubt in parents’ minds that a drug paraphernalia industry was coming after their kids. Studies showed that children reasoned a government would not reduce penalties for a drug that could hurt them.

The Parent Movement
This gave rise to a national Parent Movement which began in Atlanta in 1976 and spread across the nation. The movement was based on three goals: join with other parents to protect kids from becoming drug users, shut down headshops, and stop decriminalization. Some 3,000 parent groups from the mid-70s to the early 90s formed parent peer groups to protect their children and their children’s friends from using drugs. Many, usually in state capitals, became politically active. Their efforts to persuade legislators to pass laws outlawing drug paraphernalia drove the industry out of business. No more states decriminalized marijuana over the next several decades. NORML’s funding nosedived forcing the organization to severely curtail its decriminalization crusade.

Between 1978-79 and 1992, high school seniors’ marijuana use plummeted:

• Lifetime use was cut nearly in half from 60.4 percent to 32.6 percent.

• Past-year use dropped by more than half from 50.8 percent to 21.9 percent.

• There was a three-fold decrease in past-month use, and a

• five-fold decrease in daily marijuana use.

The first two directors of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Robert DuPont, MD, and William Pollin, MD, credit the Parent Movement with bringing about this significant reduction in marijuana use among adolescents. But in just four years, these gains reversed:

• Seniors’ lifetime marijuana use rose from 32.6 percent in 1992 to 44.8 percent in 1996-1997.

• Their past-year use nearly doubled over those four years, from 21.9 percent to 38.5 percent.

• Past-month use among seniors did double, and

• Daily use rose more than three-fold.

What made that happen?

Medical Marijuana
In 1992, three billionaires began pumping money into a by-then moribund NORML as well as into two new groups, the Marijuana Policy Project, and a coalition of other groups that became the Drug Policy Foundation. They targeted states that allow ballot initiatives, made unsubstantiated claims about the healing powers of marijuana, bought voters’ signatures, and placed measures to legalize marijuana as medicine on the ballots of states few lived in, leaving taxpayers to pay for the consequences of their actions. A steady stream of media stories across the nation educated children that pot is medicine and they responded in kind. If a government wouldn’t reduce penalties for a drug that could hurt you, that drug surely couldn’t hurt you if it was medicine! The national cacophony that led up to the first state legalizing pot as medicine – California in November 1996 – carried that message and kids heard it loud and clear.

The National Household Survey on Drug Abuse shows much of these same patterns for both adolescents and young adults during the 70s, 80s, and 90s. But since that survey’s data cannot be compared to NSDUH’s, the best we can do is look at the most recent survey, which is the 2018-2019 state estimates. The following two charts are created on the same vertical axis of 0 percent to 60 percent. The first one shows past-year marijuana use among adolescents, the second among young adults.

No, not all of the blue bars are recreational states and yes, some of the yellow bars are. But 36 of these states have legalized marijuana for medical use and that has influenced young people ages 12 to 25 to engage in its use. Like decriminalization in the 70s, the novelty of turning pot into medicine with an intensive four-year campaign championed by national media has not only had a profound effect on the nation’s young people but also introduced a unique way to approve medicines by ballot-iinitiative and, later, legislative fiat rather than through the Food and Drug Administration. Should we worry that advocates are now applying that pattern to other drugs?

Access these graphics here.
Access YRBSS here.
Access NSDUH here.
Access MTF here.
Read National Survey on Drug Use and Health: Summary of Methodological Studies, 1971-2014 [Internet] here.

DEA: Teen commits suicide after the negative effects of marijuana

SAN ANTONIO — Our weekly segment, On The Frontlines with the DEA, is meant to teach the public about the dangers out in the community when we talk about legal or illegal drugs. After watching one of these segments, a local mom reached out to Fox San Antonio to share her teenage son’s story with marijuana. A story that ends in tragedy for the 19-year-old, according to his mother.

"So when he told me he was smoking marijuana I kind of thought, you know I used marijuana, kids will be kids," said Laura Stack, Johnny’s mother.

Laura Stack’s son Johnny was 14-years-old when he first used marijuana at a high school party in Colorado, where weed is legal. Stack is originally from San Antonio.

Stack says her son hid his marijuana use from her and her husband until the signs of abuse started showing up.

"Johnny had suffered some psychotic episodes from smoking marijuana had been in several mental hospitals and several medical treatments," said Stack.

One of the first notable signs Stack says was her son’s grades.

"He was a 4.2 GPA student, he got a perfect 800 out of 800 on the SAT Math, and in his last semester of high school, he got 4 D’s. So it clearly took away his ability to learn, his motivation, his capacity to live a normal life," said Stack.

Stack claims Johnny’s use of legal marijuana lead him to have psychotic episodes, panic disorders, and anxiety attacks.

"He wrote in his journals, four days before he died even that the mob was after him. That the university he attended was actually an FBI base and that he was a terrorist," said Stack. “Just clearly a psychotic delusional thinking that was very paranoid and he never was like that before he started using marijuana."

Then on November 20th of last year, Johnny jumped off a 6 story parking garage.

"Three days before he died he came over to our house for dinner. And he said, I just want to tell you that you're right. And I said, about what he said about the marijuana. You told me that it was bad for my brain. And the marijuana has ruined my life, in my mind, and I'm sorry, and I love you, and three days later he was gone," said Stack.

"Marijuana is the most prevalent substance found in completed teen suicide in Colorado," said Dr. Kenneth Finn, Colorado Pain Medicine Physician.

According to Finn, these are some of the negative effects marijuana has on some teens.

"The number of kids presenting to the emergency department increased over time and 71% of those kids going to the ED (emergency department) with marijuana-related emergency room visits, were there for behavioral and psychiatric events like suicidality, panic disorder, anxiety, etc," said Finn.

But is it just marijuana causing the problems? According to the DEA, the problem specifically is the high levels of THC that are now much higher than ever before causing some of the dangerous problems.

"Is not really from a natural product, these are engineered plants, these are plants that have all we are going to. I’m not sure what the correct term would be, genetically been altered to become strong by specialized botanist and scientist," said Dante Sorianello, the assistant special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration in the San Antonio district.

That’s why the DEA is warning parents to be vigilant since this is not the same high as decades ago.

"This is not a DEA agent being an anti-marijuana guy. This is a DEA agent being someone who follows facts and logic, so let’s go where the science goes and let’s go where the facts go before we make long-term decisions that can harm our youth and our country in our communities," said Sorianello.

Today, Stack tries to prevent other teens from going through what her son went through. She created Johnny’s Ambassadors, which is a non-profit that educates parents and teens about the risks of today’s high THC marijuana on adolescent brain development, mental illness, and suicide. In your neighborhood, on the streets, Fox San Antonio and the DEA will keep you informed and safe.