Pubdate: Wed, 22 Jul 2015 Source: Oregonian, The (Portland, OR) Copyright: 2015 The Oregonian Contact: http://www.oregonlive.com/oregonian/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/324 SENDING THE RIGHT POT MESSAGE TO OREGONIANS UNDER 21 The drive to make recreational pot legal culminated in the passage of Measure 91 with the promise Oregon's youth would be protected against widespread stonerhood. Even the most ardent marijuana advocates agreed that easy availability of the drug to the under-21 crowd would work against the best purposes of a free pot market: adults choosing wisely for adults. The Legislature, in passing statutes making Measure 91 real, included a section stipulating active outreach and education to protect minors. This summer, the Oregon Liquor Control Commission will deploy a rulemaking committee to ensure advertisements for weed neither target nor excessively appeal to young folks. Good. But no committee and no rules - other than keeping the basic pot equivalent of Joe Camel out of the smoking tent - will be able to fully ensure the outcome. Marketing efforts saturate the ether as never before, whether it's online or in pre-movie snippets at the local theater: To open a bottle of Coke, remember, is to avail oneself to happiness. Meanwhile, Washington and Colorado, which curb advertising targeted at young people in much the same way Oregon narrows the audience for cigarette and alcohol ads, have not reported a shift in the behavior of teenagers that would suggest an inevitable descent to widespread stonerhood. But this is serious business. A limited but growing body of research centers on potential deleterious effects marijuana consumption has on the developing, adolescent brain; one study conducted in New Zealand and reported by the U.S.-based National Institute on Drug Abuse found that persistent marijuana use starting in adolescence was associated with an 8-point decline in IQ as measured in mid-adulthood. Separately, a few countries outright ban advertising of toys and other products targeted at the very young - under 12 years of age, mainly - because research shows they lack judgment-making skills, still to develop. For Oregon to achieve its goal of adequately protecting the much broader under-21 crowd from unbridled pot use, it must conduct a layered outreach - an effort that goes beyond placing limits on advertising and takes into account the ambiguity surrounding consequences of the drug's use. To overemphasize the role of advertising is to externalize a first responsibility that rests with families, in which the best instruction for getting pot right should take place; and at school, where real information should be available in real time. On Tuesday, Rep. Ann Lininger, D-Lake Oswego, convened a meeting of lawmakers and others to consider the establishment of a Student Advisory Council on Drug Policy and Youth, an idea she credits to her son, Adam, a junior at Lake Oswego High School. Good again. The idea would be to have a dozen or so high school students from across Oregon keep tabs on their peers as recreational marijuana becomes an act of adult retail commerce as common as stopping off at the package store for a bottle of gin. It's certainly not difficult for high schoolers already to illegally obtain pot; the drug's legality for adults, however, should not accelerate its use among the young. Lininger, who co-chaired the Legislature's joint committee to implement Measure 91, wryly noted, in an interview with the editorial board of The Oregonian/OregonLive, that youth committee membership should not be limited to those with spotless records. "This is a leadership opportunity for young people to deal with cultural change," she said. "I mean, is (legal pot) changing the situation in school?" An immediate complication is the rising appetite among legal pot sellers and would-be merchants of recreational pot to make appeals for new customers. Ads and promotions will be involved. Noelle Crombie of The Oregonian/OregonLive reported this week that retailers and producers both are "scrambling for a share of an increasingly crowded market" and "taking steps to promote their brands." Most striking in her report, however, is a health official's note of a 2014 state survey finding that showed marijuana use among Multnomah County adolescents as exceeding state and national averages. Ditto for the 18-to-25-year-old crowd. Anyone know why? No. Is it worth watching? Surely. Are advertisements responsible? Not possible. It is time to have a wide-ranging discussion among regulators and yet-to-be-named OLCC rule-making committee members about measures that might really count when it comes to protecting under-age Oregonians. Rational limits on pot advertisements certainly will be necessary. But so, too, will be more open and more frequent conversations at home and at school that address, head-on, the role of marijuana in lives just taking shape. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom