Since January, when the recreational use of marijuana became legal in Illinois, state-licensed stores have sold more than $500 million worth of the drug. Illinois is one of 15 states plus the District of Columbia that has legalized recreational use of the drug. In 1996 California legalized medical marijuana. Nearly a quarter century later, 36 states including Illinois and the District of Columbia now permit it. Over this period marijuana use has become acceptable in most of the United States. But has this acceptance brought harm to young people?

Mary Thielbahr, founder and director of Clearview Girls Academy, a Christian residential treatment center, would most likely answer with a resounding “yes.”

“Today’s marijuana is not like the ‘60’s version. Scientific changes made to the plant now produce an extremely powerful substance,” Thielbahr wrote in a recent white paper, “Marijuana Harms Teenager Minds.” She warned while society claims marijuana provides relaxation or relief from sadness and pain, it “poisons the brain for babies, children, teens, and even young adults up to the age of 24 years old.”

Thielbahr shared that since the early 1990s, the federal government has reported “the average THC content in marijuana was less than 4 percent. It is now about 15 percent and much higher in some products such as oils and other extracts.” THC or Tetrahydrocannabinol is the psychoactive compound in marijuana that gives the user the feeling of being high.

She reported that according to WebMD, “the odds of addiction are 1 in 6 if you use pot in your teens. It might be as high as 1 in 2 among those who use it every day.” Users may also become physically dependent on the drug.

As a result, marijuana can bring about significant changes in behavior after one year’s use. “Marijuana actually affects teenage brains significantly and changes the teen’s personality,” she shared. “Parents of a teen that uses marijuana end up with a different child–one that shows defiance because of changes in the teen’s brain.”

Thielbahr said marijuana effectively damages the brain which must be rewired and that takes time. The damaged brain “cannot change without a focused, long-term transformation process,” she explained advising against short-term treatment centers. She suggested parents seek long-term treatment options, such as Clearview Horizon Therapeutic Boarding School and Residential Treatment Center for Girls, that address other risky behaviors teens engaged in marijuana use are likely to be involved.

Thielbahr also noted teens who use cannabis may be more likely to commit suicide. She shared that teen suicide rates have risen in “states that fully legalized the use of marijuana” listing Colorado, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.

Read the white paper HERE.

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Written by Michael Cook

The most dangerous side of legal pot is Big Marijuana, say foes of the referenda in five American states on election day. To see what’s coming down the pike, consider what happened to Colorado’s ballot initiative 139.

Marijuana is already legal in Colorado. In 2000 voters supported Amendment 20 to the state constitution permitting people to cultivate a few marijuana plants for medicinal use. In 2012, they supported Amendment 64 legalizing private cultivation and retail sales for recreational use.

The results have not been positive.

Although supporters of recreational pot had the gall to argue that legalization would lead to decreased use by teenagers, regular use of marijuana among children between 12 and 17 has been above the national average and is rising faster than the national average.

Nor did legalization reduce black market marijuana activity in Colorado. Last year the state’s Attorney General, Cynthia Coffman, told the media:

“The criminals are still selling on the black market. … We have plenty of cartel activity in Colorado (and) plenty of illegal activity that has not decreased at all.”

Homelessness has surged by 50 percent from the time recreational pot was legalized. Surveys at Denver shelters estimate that about 20 to 30 percent of newcomers
 have moved to Colorado so that they can have easy access to the drug.

Edibles – cookies, lollopops, sodas, cupcakes and the like — now make up at least half of the Colorado marijuana market. They often contain 3 to 20 times the concentration of THC, the main drug in marijuana, which is recommended for intoxication. Unsurprisingly, there have been several deaths related to marijuana edibles since legalization.

So people disturbed by such trends started lobbying for mild restrictions. Ballot initiative 139 would have imposed a few conditions on retail sales such as child-resistant packaging, product health warnings, and keeping THC potency to 16 percent (its natural concentration in cannabis is 0.2 to 0.5 percent).

Big Marijuana fought back.

It sued to keep ballot initiative 139 off the ballot. When it lost that court battle, it paid signature-gathering companies to refuse business from supporters of 139. In a blistering editorial, a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper, The Gazette, based in Colorado Springs, declared that “Big Marijuana is officially corrupt”:

When Colorado voters legalized marijuana, they meant well. They wanted a safe trade, regulated like alcohol. They ended up with a system of, by and for Big Marijuana. It is a racket in which the will of voters gets quashed before votes are cast. Any doubt about Big Marijuana’s disregard for Colorado’s desire for good regulation will disappear with a new revelation: the industry bought away the public’s chance to vote.

As the lobby group Smart Approaches to Marijuana says, “This is not about mom-and-pop pot stores; it’s about, in the words of one ‘Ganjapreneur,’ creating ‘the Wal-Mart of Marijuana’.”

The financial potential is enormous. (Even MercatorNet is receiving email invitations to invest in the marijuana industry.) In Colorado alone, legal sales of medical and recreational pot last year amounted to US$996.2 million. This generated $135 million in state taxes, which creates a government interest in keeping the business alive and healthy.

The message from Colorado, then, is clear: don’t legalize pot. Not if you want to keep your kids safe. Not if you want to keep crime down. And not if you want to protect democracy. As Ben Cort, a member of the board of directors of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, told The Gazette:

“The narrative of the marijuana industry has been ‘don’t meddle with our business, because the voters have spoken and the will of the voters is sacred. This is a democracy.’ Then we have a genuine democratic effort to improve recreational marijuana regulation, and the industry shuts down democracy with big money and a bag of dirty tricks.”

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet.   This article was originally posted at Mercatornet.com

TV advertising for marijuana is banned because of Federal regulations. This video ad early went to air last year in Colorado. Produced by Cannabrand, a marijuana marketing company, and Neos, a manufacturer of refined cannabis-infused vaporization pens, the ad focused on lifestyle rather than getting high.