Pubdate: Thu, 25 Sep 2014
Source: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner (AK)
Copyright: 2014 Fairbanks Publishing Company, Inc.
Contact: http://newsminer.com/pages/submit_letters_to_editor
Website: http://newsminer.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/764
Author: Casey Grove

LEGALIZING MARIJUANA IN ALASKA: PARENTS FOR AND AGAINST ENTER THE BATTLE

ANCHORAGE - Parents aligned with campaigns on opposing sides of a ballot
measure to legalize marijuana in Alaska spoke out Thursday, either
saying that legal pot would be harmful to their children or that it
would be a better way to keep the drug out of their kids' hands.

The initiative, Measure 2 on the Nov. 4 ballot, aims to make the use and
cultivation of marijuana legal in Alaska for people 21 years of age and
older. It would also direct the state to start a process to regulate and
tax the sale of pot.

Proponents argue that marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol and
already more widely available to children on the black market than it
would be if legalized and regulated. Opponents say legalization would
send the wrong message to children, who are more susceptible to pot's
sometimes negative effects, and say higher production would make it
increasingly accessible to kids.

Both sides invited news reporters to talk to parents voicing their
opinions Thursday.

Fairbanks teacher Cheryl Severn said she agreed with the group Big
Marijuana Big Mistake and said legalization would not serve Alaskans'
best interests. But legal pot would be especially bad for kids, said
Severn, who teaches health and physical education.

"The earlier you start substance abuse, the more ramifications there
are, in your physical body, your IQ," Severn said. "There's a lot of
research on that."

Severn said she could not imagine how - if there was more marijuana in
Alaska and it was sold in shops - it could be less accessible to
children. Like alcohol, if parents are allowed to have pot, it's
likely more of them will have it at home, where their kids can get at
it, Severn said.

Of her four children, ages 20 to 28, Severn said none had used
marijuana in their teens. That was because the family never had
marijuana in the home and they discussed the drug's dangers, she said.
"Prevention is what we did," Severn said.

That's exactly what the Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol in Alaska
campaign says parents should do: talk to their kids about pot. But if
children are going to seek out marijuana anyway, the pro-pot group
says the responsible thing to do is to take pot sales away from
unscrupulous drug dealers who are already selling it to kids and
others, including medical marijuana patients who have no other place
to get it. In their own news conference later Thursday, the
legalization campaign announced a new coalition of parents from
Anchorage, Fairbanks and elsewhere in the state who want marijuana
legalized. At the time of the announcement, the coalition numbered 35
people, though campaign spokesman Taylor Bickford said he expected the
list to grow. Speaking by phone from Fairbanks during and, in an
interview, after the news conference, parent and accountant Shaun
Tacke said he planned to talk to his 2-year-old son someday about the
risks of marijuana relative to other controlled substances, including
alcohol, which Tacke said were far more dangerous.

The fact that teenagers get their pot from dealers now also makes it
more likely for them to be introduced to drugs such as methamphetamine
or heroin, Tacke said. Having licensed and vetted vendors - who would
lose their businesses if caught selling to kids - would make it more
difficult for kids to get pot, he said.

"Parents, I think a lot of them want to have their head in the sand,"
Tacke said. "The reality is that more than 50 percent of Americans use
it, and parents go, 'Oh, my kid would never do that.' You're living on
a cloud, man. And you cannot keep living like that."

Tacke said he disagreed with the notion that legalization would send
the wrong message to kids. The visibility would actually help those
positive conversations between parents and children, he said. "If it's
more out in the open and parents discuss it with their kids, they
might choose to make that decision not to do something with that
substance," Tacke said.

When Bickford was asked if announcing the parents coalition was an
effort to put a "family friendly" face on the legalization effort -
considering that in the past week a TV reporter quit her job with an
on-air expletive, video of which has gone viral on the Internet, and
legalization supporters shouted more obscenities at a subsequent state
hearing - he said being respectful and building support among parents
had been a goal of the campaign all along.

"Nothing that happened earlier in the week has changed that," Bickford
said. "We're in the last six weeks of the campaign, and this is where
you're going to see a lot of activity picking up. And we're going to
see a lot of different people from a diverse background talk about why
prohibition as a system doesn't work, it's failed, and that regulating
marijuana is the common sense approach."
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MAP posted-by: Matt