"A neighborhood is on alert as residents say students gathering, smoking, buying and selling drugs along Indianola Avenue -- near two schools." Source: WCMH4-TV Interview October 29, 2010
Some commenters on the NBC4i blog say the kids are only smoking cigarettes. Since that Sunoco station buys and sells cigarettes legally, why would shadowy individuals be buying and selling cigarettes late at night—under the cover of darkness—as the local neighbor describes in this TV interview? That claim is suspect... and oh by the way, cigarette smoking harms young lungs. (Teen Health).
This is not your parents' 60's weed
Some comments on this blog are surprising in their lack of knowledge of the debilitating effects of marijuana today, especially on the young. Ask any drug abuse counsellor and they'll tell you that for many of their patients, marijuana was the drug of first choice. The statistics don't lie. In a recently republished 12-page research report titled "Marijuana Abuse" (PDF version, HTML version) the Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Nora D. Volkow, M.D. says:
"The THC content or potency of marijuana, as detected in confiscated samples over the past 30+ years (Potency Monitoring Project, University of Mississippi), has been steadily increasing. This increase raises concerns that the consequences of marijuana use could be worse than in the past, particularly among new users, or in young people, whose brains are still developing. Id., p. 3.Does anyone seriously believe that ignoring this problem among our children and at their schools is the right approach? The statistics don't lie. The evidence doesn't lie.
The Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN), a system for monitoring the health impact of drugs, estimated that in 2008, marijuana was a contributing factor in over 374,000 emergency department (ED) visits in the United States, with about two-thirds of patients being male, and 13 percent between the ages of 12 and 17. Id., p. 2.
Marijuana users who have taken large doses of the drug may experience an acute psychosis, which includes hallucinations, delusions, and a loss of the sense of personal identity." Id., p. 3.
