Pubdate: Sun, 18 Oct 2015
Source: Gazette, The (Colorado Springs, CO)
Copyright: 2015 The Gazette
Contact: http://www.gazette.com/sections/opinion/submitletter/
Website: http://www.gazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/165

POT OFFICIALLY A CRISIS IN SCHOOL

Pot legalization is a disaster for Colorado children and schools. 
Listen to the experts who live it every day.

The crisis of pot-infested schools was identified by Colorado 
educators last week as the No. 1 issue they face. They shared their 
concerns and frustrations as more than 350 school officials, first 
responders and school mental health professionals met Wednesday and 
Thursday in Thornton for the Colorado School Safety Resource Center's 
Safe Schools Summit.

"We got sold that marijuana legalization was going to positively 
impact our schools," said Christine Harms, director of the Colorado 
School Safety Resource Center, as quoted in The Denver Post. "And 
there is the school infrastructure aspect, but we're not seeing 
tremendous changes with marijuana prevention programs, and our 
students are paying the price."

Assistant state's Attorney General Michael Song told school faculty 
of the shifting attitudes young people have in favor of marijuana. 
The risk-reward ratio favors risk more than it did before passage of 
Amendment 64, which legalized pot for adults. Educators complained of 
parents who smoke and consume marijuana with kids.

"There's a shift in culture," said Jeff Whitmore, director of 
transportation for Bayfield School District in southwestern Colorado. 
"Kids see their parents smoking it and see it marketed everywhere, 
and they think it's normal and OK for them to do."

Bayfield expressed dismay after an hourlong presentation highlighted 
the in-plain-view obscurity of drug-laced edibles that appeal to 
children and can be easily consumed in classrooms, hallways and lunchrooms.

"At first, I thought it was similar to alcohol and that the kids 
would do it anyway and all that," Whitmore said. "But it's like 
they're disguising alcohol as Kool-Aid and marketing it to kids. 
These edibles are cookies and gummy bears, and they're filled with 
high amounts of THC."

Alcohol and cigarettes have long been problems in schools. But 
students have not achieved alcohol intoxication or ingested tobacco 
by popping common food items into their mouths wherever food is 
permitted. Consuming alcohol and tobacco in schools involves greater 
risk, and more deviant efforts to hide the activity, than getting 
stoned on THC.

It is scandalous that our state constitution facilitates and protects 
Big Marijuana, aka Big Tobacco 2.0, in marketing a psychoactive drug 
to kids. With pot as the biggest problem in our schools, the state's 
future is compromised. It means test scores and education are 
rendered secondary concerns. A generation of kids who sit through 
lectures in the haze of THC intoxication is not likely to compete 
among peer groups from more sober countries and states. It makes 
Colorado an international joke.

With legalization, Colorado law is no longer on the side of educators 
and kids in regard to substance abuse. Teachers, principals and 
counselors cannot successfully combat this alone. As seen last week 
in Thornton, they are overwhelmed by the new dilemma.

Gov. John Hickenlooper, legislators, state and local school board 
members and other officials need to acknowledge the crisis and 
respond with urgency. But we cannot wait or depend on a government 
solution. Mothers, fathers, grandparents and clergy need to get 
involved and intervene. They need to somehow ensure the children in 
their lives are not sitting through classroom lectures in stupors 
caused by drug-laced gummy bears and licorice.

The Gazette
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom