As the world moves on from myths of the past, one Louisiana legislator keeps trying to move the state backwards, to the detriment of its citizens’ health.
The latest attempt from Democrat state Rep. Candace Newell in HB 373 would create a pilot program that legalizes recreational marijuana. Essentially, it allows the legal dispensaries of medical marijuana to set up separate shops to sell weed for any use. It’s just the latest variation on several tries over the years she has backed to do what almost half of the states have done, legalize pot in some fashion.
Of course, the rules surrounding medical marijuana in Louisiana are so fast and loose that the herb almost already is practically legal for casual consumption, but this approach at least would remove the charade and hassle of getting some kind of medical authorization for its use (not that marijuana has almost no valid use as a medical treatment of some kind). Fortunately, recently legislators have begun to push back, with some help from Congress, but hardly successfully.
This rapid advancement of Louisianans’ abilities to go through the day in a haze has come despite longstanding evidence that hash, especially used over a long period, brings significant health risks. And continuing research shows how its spread across the country is having an especially deleterious impact on youth, where over a third most recently believed at worst it caused only minor harm to the user.
The consumable products as well as vaping of it now are used by over a quarter of high school seniors and a twelfth of eight-graders. The good news is these figures actually have fallen over the last few years. The bad news is it’s stronger and more available than ever so that, in an echo from decades past when smoking in the school restroom involved cigarettes, it now involves vaping grass in some form.
Which carries negative health consequences especially for teens. Marijuana’s psychoactive compounds in whatever form affect development of memory, processing of emotion, motor coordination, and perception of time. It significantly increases the chance by adulthood of developing cannabis-use disorder, characterized by an inability to cut down on its use (yes, it’s addictive), among other things, and in teens is linked with depression and suicidal ideation.
It's bad enough to have impaired adults out in public, but it’s worse still to approve tacitly of children hooting up by making the substance so easily available to the public that will lead to permanent health problems. Although researchers finger technological communication device overuse as the primary reason for it, perhaps this drug use also contributes to why Generation Z (born 1997-2010) is the first ever to be dumber than its predecessor.
More than scorning Newell’s bill out of the Legislature, legislators additionally need to revisit the laxness of Louisiana’s laws condoning marijuana use and reverse that. There’s still time to introduce bills to get done this needed job.
No comments:
Post a Comment