Pubdate: Sun, 04 Sep 2016
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2016 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Robin Abcarian

'THE MORE ACCESS, THE MORE USE'

L.A. Substance-Abuse Prevention Specialist Works to Limit Pot 
Availability Among Young People.

When I wrote on Friday that pot use can have a serious downside for 
some teenagers, I hardly expected to be accused of embracing an 
archaic, alarmist "Reefer Madness" point of view.

"Are you paid by an anti-marijuana faction?" asked one reader. "You 
should be ashamed."

I'm sure I've done a lot of things that I should be ashamed of, but 
raising questions about the effects of marijuana on developing brains 
is not one of them.

If we're going to consider legalizing marijuana for adult 
recreational use in November - and most California voters are leaning 
toward a "yes" - then we ought not to just focus on how much tax 
revenue marijuana will generate, or who gets what kind of license to 
grow, manufacture and sell.

We ought to be able to have a rational discussion about the best way 
to keep it away from kids (who, let's be honest folks, will always 
manage to get pot, the same way they have always managed to get 
cigarettes and alcohol).

We have to embrace the nuances.

Can kids smoke pot and end up in the emergency room with psychosis or 
symptoms of schizophrenia? Why yes, they can.

Can kids smoke pot and grow up to be president of the United States? 
Why yes, as a matter of fact, they can.

Cannabis: It's complicated. ::

Here's what Gilbert Mora, a Los Angeles substance-abuse prevention 
specialist, says when kids challenge him about Barack Obama's pot-smoking past:

"President Obama was smoking rag weed," he tells them. "You're 
smoking that premium, medical-grade stuff, much better than anything 
he ever smoked. When he was your age, he'd have to smoke two or three 
joints to get as high as you do today with one puff."

I visited Mora, 46, the other day at his threadbare office at the 
Hollywood Family Recovery Center along a slightly grimy stretch of 
Sunset Boulevard across from Hollywood High School. He works for 
Behavioral Health Services Inc., a nonprofit healthcare organization 
that focuses on substance abuse and mental health, among other services.

He invited me to meet him to discuss his concerns about legalization. 
He didn't say so, but I think he was alarmed by my columns predicting 
the passage of Proposition 64.

Mora talks to kids about the dangers of drugs, alcohol and tobacco. 
He works with neighborhood groups to promote substanceabuse 
prevention, and is a member of Rethinking Access to Marijuana, a 
coalition of L.A. County nonprofits. He takes no position on 
legalization, but he's not happy about it.

He tries to get to kids before they smoke weed, the 11-, 12- and 
13-year-olds who haven't been exposed yet. When they tell him pot's 
not as bad as alcohol, he tells them that drinking is like jumping 
off a five-story building, and smoking pot is like jumping off a 
two-story building.

"Smoking marijuana is better than alcohol," he says, "but you can 
still get hurt."

His goal is to make it harder for kids to score pot, which will make 
it harder for them to smoke it (or vape it, or dab it, or eat it, etc.).

"We are trying to limit availability, whether socially or through 
retail," he said. "With youth, availability is everything. The more 
access, the more use." ::

The author of Proposition 64, Sacramento attorney Richard Miadich, 
has vowed repeatedly that minors will have less access to marijuana 
in a legal market than they do now.

"The real question," said Miadich during a recent panel discussion in 
Sacramento, "is, do we perpetuate a system that allows kids to access 
marijuana by drug dealers? Or do we try something new?"

The text of the proposition vows that the measure "will incapacitate 
the black market and move marijuana purchases into a legal structure 
with strict safeguards against children accessing it."

It will, among other things, bar cannabis businesses from operating 
within 600 feet of schools and other places that kids congregate, 
forbid advertising targeted at kids, and establish "strict" packaging 
and labeling rules - including prohibiting products that are 
"appealing to children or easily confused with commercially sold 
candy or foods that do not contain marijuana." It requires that a 
huge chunk of the state's annual marijuana revenue - estimated at 
hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps even a billion - be spent on 
youth drug prevention and education programs.

Mora's not buying that. He says surveys out of Colorado, which 
legalized pot in 2012, showing that teenage marijuana use rates are 
flat or even slightly below the national average (which I reported 
Friday) are wrong. And he may have a point.

He frets, rightfully, about edibles, the cause of many emergency room visits.

"Too many edibles look too much like candy," he said. "And there is 
no way to know how much [pot] is in them. And even when they do know, 
it's like one serving is the head of the gummy bear. How is a kid 
going to know that? When someone so young gets a hold of these potent 
edibles, it increases their heart rate to almost cardiac arrest."

(It's true that edibles can cause hearts to race and induce 
panic-attack-level anxiety, and researchers are studying the role 
marijuana may play in cardiac problems.)

When I asked Mora about his worst fear about legalization, I was 
taken aback by his answer. I could not disagree with him more, but in 
the spirit of fairness, I'm giving him the last word.

"We will lose a generation of kids," he said. "Perception of harm is 
at an all-time low. When perception of harm drops, use goes up. I 
have a feeling we are going to learn a very hard lesson."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom