LITTLE ROCK — YOU MIGHT remember there was an election a couple of months ago. That’s a long time in politics, but it’s still worth remembering. Because there were some important matters on the ballot here and there. Memory grows furtive, but as we recall, this state’s voters turned down a proposal to allow “medical” marijuana to be sold in Arkansas.
Just barely.
The measure got 49 percent of the vote.
The state might have dodged a bullet this year, but there’s no telling when the next time “medical” marijuana will make it to the ballot here in Arkansas. And pass. And once the weed is okayed for medical purposes, it can be, and will be, used for others.
See what happened in Colorado. Back during the growing season-that is, in July-researchers with the University of Colorado published a study of 164 teens who were being treated around Denver for substance abuse. Turns out 74 percent of them-seventy four percent-said they’d used somebody else’s medical marijuana at some point in the past.
Or as the study put it in the very best scientese: “Medical marijuana use among adolescent patients in substance abuse treatment is very common, implying substantial diversion from registered users.” In other words, the kids are getting into the stash.
Even if “medical marijuana” is theoretically verboten to anybody who isn’t licensed to have it, how keep the neighborhood kids from getting into Aunt Jenny’s special herbs?
The surplus of prescription drugs so freely dispensed by generous but unthinking doctors is already a problem in Arkansas-and elsewhere. Those little bottles full of pills can be an invitation to get high/low for kids too young, or just too immature, to know better.
THERE’S more disquieting news-and precedent-from Colorado. Its voters passed something called Amendment 64 this past November. It allows for the recreational use of marijuana. You can’t buy or sell the stuff, but you can grow it at home for your own use. Provided only that you’re 21 years old.
To quote one overwhelmed detective in the Denver press: “There’s plenty of evidence that this is a harmful thing for kids. I can’t even believe I have to say that. We’ve seen children infant age that have been getting into this stuff and hospitalized, and this has been under medical marijuana [laws]. I can’t imagine how bad it’s going to get with full-blown legalization.”
If there’s any good news in all of this-granted, it’s not much-it may be that states like Arkansas can watch what happens in Colorado and Washington in the coming years, and see just how legalization affects the folks there. And their kids. And learn from others’ experience.
Something tells us the results won’t be pretty. But we’ll be keeping an eye out for news from the once Golden West, especially news about drug abuse, and hoping it won’t be the saddest-that is, the fatal-kind.
Editorial, Pages 14 on 01/25/2013