Marijuana effort should get statewide support

To the editor:

Great news last month from the CDC. The 2011 Youth Risk Behavior Survey is out, and countering the national trend, Colorado teen pot use has declined

11 percent since 2009, to below the national average. This national survey is the only one with a large enough sample to measure results on a state-by-state basis. It counters the anecdotes and ad hoc surveys of those who use fear of a teen drug epidemic to influence public policy.

So why are drug suspensions up? Fewer than 1 percent of students who use drugs every year are caught and suspended, so a slight change in a school’s drug enforcement policy can have a huge effect on the number of drug-related suspensions. Since my high school years in the early 1970s, teen pot use has never been curtailed by lack of availability; pot has always been easy to get for a high school student. Making it easy to get for a 60-something with a chronic illness has had no measurable effect on availability to youth, according to the Monitoring the Future study.

Colorado’s parents were rightly concerned that the proliferation of for-profit retail stores selling medical cannabis which began in 2009 would “send the wrong message” to our youth. But now the data show safe patient access to this useful medicine has not resulted in any increase in teen use. Colorado’s medical cannabis experiment has been successful.

This November, voters in Berthoud will consider banning safe retail access for patients, and voters in Fort Collins consider restoring it. Meanwhile, all of Colorado will consider Amendment 64, which will allow all adults, not just those with a permission slip from a doctor, to grow a few pot plants at home or to purchase a small amount from a regulated retail store for personal use. Some who oppose marijuana will once again raise fears that any access for adults will harm children. Others will oppose A64 it because it does not go far enough to free the weed. I think A64 provides a balanced, rational approach to regulate marijuana, and it deserves support.

Wes Melander

Loveland

Don’t let extremes

dictate how you will vote

To the editor:

Tick tock, tick tock.

That election clock is ticking down with the pendulum swinging — stopping only at the far right and far left. It never stops in the middle where most folks live.

We still have time to educate ourselves regarding our candidates and the kind of country we want to live in and raise our children and grandchildren in. Never before in my lifetime have the candidates been more polar opposites then they are this year.

If you believe the United States in its 236-year history of existence has made the world a better place, has advanced: science, medicine, industry, business and economics for all the world to benefit from then your choice is clear.

On the other hand if you believe, based on our last 3½ years, that the United States is the fourth member of the “axis of evil” then you too have a clear choice.

This year there is no middle ground. Are you going to vote based on a proud 236-year history, the last

3½ years, or the last political ad you see on television?

Tick, tock, tick, tock.

Michael McKenna

Loveland