Pubdate: Wed, 20 May 2015
Source: Manteca Bulletin (CA)
Copyright: 2015 Manteca Bulletin
Contact:  http://www.mantecabulletin.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3670

CONCERN ABOUT LEGAL POT & MINORS AIRED CALIFORNIA

OAKLAND (AP) - Members of a commission led by California's lieutenant 
governor said Tuesday that legalizing the recreational use of 
marijuana could generate enough tax revenue to fund drug education 
and counseling centers at every high school in the state, a potential 
upside that should be seriously considered as activists work to put a 
pot-legalization initiative before voters next year.

Meeting at a youth center in a part of East Oakland scarred by 
violence, poverty and addiction, the panel held a public discussion 
on the issue that could make or break a legalization campaign in the 
nation's top pot-producing state: concerns about keeping the drug out 
of the hands of minors and young adults once it can be purchased as 
easily as a six-pack of beer. Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, the commission's 
chairman, acknowledged that crafting a system of retail sales and 
regulations that satisfies fearful parents will be a tough sell.

"I've got three kids, and I have a wife at home who is not so 
convinced we should be heading in this direction," said Newsom, a 
Democratic candidate for governor in 2018 who supports legalization 
in theory but has not yet endorsed a particular approach.

Psychiatrist Timmen Cermak, past president of the California Society 
for Addiction Medicine, said worries that more children would start 
using weed are probably overblown given how accessible the drug is 
already. Public health surveys show that three-quarters of California 
11th-graders say then can easily obtain marijuana, a rate that has 
held steady for four decades, Cermak said.

Meanwhile, the proportion of youth who are heavy pot users - those 
who use it 20 or more days a month - has not risen or declined in the 
18 years since California became the first state to legalize 
marijuana, he said. But those young people are at high risk of 
failing school and cognitive impairments, Cermak said. If taxes on 
marijuana sales were devoted to creating school-based Student 
Assistance Centers to serve them and to persuade all adolescents to 
refrain, legalization might actually be an improvement, he said.

"California has the opportunity to enact policies that offer new 
opportunities for protecting youth," he said.

Peter Banys, a psychiatry professor at the University of California, 
San Francisco who also specializes in treating addiction, agreed. 
Banys said that zero-tolerance and drug-free school policies that 
make possession of small amounts of marijuana grounds for suspending 
or expelling students from school have done more harm than good by 
cutting youth off from sources of support.

"Marijuana is not nothing. It's not gum drops. But the risks are 
fairly low" for addiction, he said. "There are a lot problems with 
the enforcement approach, and the biggest is it hasn't worked."

Ron Allen, a bishop in Sacramento who leads an anti-drug organization 
called the International Faith Based Coalition, said he remains 
skeptical. Allen predicted that clergy from every mainline religion 
would be lining up to oppose the effort to have California join the 
four other states that have legalized recreational marijuana use for adults.

"That's illusory thinking, that by legalizing marijuana we are going 
to be able to control it," Allen said. "If the adults are not saying 
no, how do we expect our youth to say no?"
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