An author of multiple books, Naomi is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and at the Independent Women’s Forum.
Does “making American healthy again” mean the federal legalization of marijuana? Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose hearings to be confirmed as the next secretary of Health and Human Services took place this week, seems to think so.
When Kennedy was running for president as an independent, he released an ad noting that he wanted to legalize pot and use the proceeds to help end addiction. He said he would build “renewal centers of detoxification” that will help address “the rise of mental illness and PTSD and drug addiction that is debilitating our children.”
If states are supposed to be laboratories of democracy, then it’s time we report results from the experiment with legalization on the state level. Legalization and the not-unrelated widespread cultural acceptance of cannabis has led to an extraordinary rise in its use as well as in its tragic consequences. Daily use of cannabis is now more common than daily alcohol use. The potency of the product has gone through the roof. Smoking pot in the 1970s and ‘80s meant you were using a product with 3% or 4% potency. Now it’s closer to 30-40% and some of the products on the market have up to 90%.
And the results have been devastating. A New York Times article in the fall noted that “from Washington State to West Virginia, psychiatrists treat rising numbers of people whose use of the drug has brought on delusions, paranoia and other symptoms of psychosis.”
In emergency rooms, too, the article said, “Physicians encounter patients with severe vomiting induced by the drug — a potentially devastating condition that once was rare, but now, they say, is common.” About 18 million people (a third of all users 18 and up) can be said to have a cannabis use disorder, meaning that their use is having a negative impact on their lives and they continue to use anyway.
But it is the kids who are suffering most. Not only is cannabis use interfering with adults’ ability to parent, but kids themselves are using in order to self-medicate for anxiety, depression and a variety of other mental health challenges. They have gotten the idea that cannabis may actually be good for them.
H/T: www.deseret.com
You can view the whole article at this link Perspective: Don’t believe the lies about cannabis
