Marijuana - Legalization does not Turn Out Like Promised
Two Grand Haven City Council Members were Hesitant about Legalizing Marijuana
When voters approve marijuana legalization, they envision people growing a few plants in their homes, and having the freedom to do as they please. They want to have the ability to heal their ailments with potential natural remedies, have visions of small mom-and-pop stores, and do not want young people to face lifetimes of punishments for making a bad decision. But this is far from what actually takes place. In reality, eager local residents partner with big players in the marijuana industry. They begin building their businesses through marketing and new product development. As marijuana usage becomes more common, effects on the youth and declines in society become more evident.
Grand Haven awarded medical marijuana licenses on September 10, 2020, and legalized recreational use in June 2022. During the December 20, 2021, meeting of the Grand Haven City Council, Mayor McNally talked about legalization, (4:01:20) “Many people voted to legalize marijuana to eliminate the stigma of criminal conviction for marijuana use, particularly for young people whose futures were being compromised by immature decisions regarding drug use.”
When they were considering recreational legalization, Grand Haven City Council member Mike Fritz was concerned about bringing Grand Haven down the slippery slope. He shared his concerns during the February 7, 2022, Grand Haven City Council Meeting.
(2:39:00) “I have seen it happen by my sister’s house down by Battle Creek. They have 72 provisioning centers and they are next door, next door, next door, next door. They are all over the place down there. I don’t know how they all make it, but you got to remember it’s half way between Detroit and Chicago so it’s really an ideal location with 94 there. But we just got to make sure, can we regulate it or not? I mean, say how many we want. Those are the questions I want answered, and then by doing what we’re doing now, we’re not going to get any answers. The planning commission is not going to know how to do it.”
These two council members understood that Grand Haven was heading down a slippery slope.
The state of Colorado has journeyed far down this slippery slope, and Luke Niforatos, Executive Vice President of Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) based in Denver Colorado, understands where Michigan is heading. In the podcast How the legalization of Marijuana Has Negatively Impacted Our Youth, he talks about marijuana marketing.
(26:55) “The normalization, the commercialization; We see billboards everywhere. ‘Don’t worry, be happy. Marijuana delivers.’ They are making it look cool again, just like Marlboro did back in the day with big tobacco. And marketing is not limited to billboards. Let’s be honest. Digital is where it’s at. [] Instagram is where it’s happening, and the reason why it’s happening there is because they’ve figured out a way around the security blocks that Facebook and Instagram have. Facebook and Instagram will block marijuana advertisements, but if somebody just posts a picture to Instagram of themselves smoking a joint, or eating a marijuana edible, it is much harder for Facebook and Instagram to block. [] In reality, the marijuana industry, perhaps a pot shop or other company, is paying that person to post that picture of their product, to push it to them [kids]. It’s very, very tricky and sneaky how they’re doing it.”
In another podcast, Marijuana and our Children: The Blunt Truth, Dr. Christian Thurstone, Professor at Denver Health/University of Colorado, speaks more about marijuana marketing and the influence on youth.
(18:55) “Tobacco companies, alcohol companies, they’ve known about this brain development process for decades, which is why both industries have gotten into big trouble in the past for very clearly, blatantly targeting young people with their advertising and marketing, and I believe in some cases, continue to do so. And it’s purely economics.” He continues, (21:20) “We are disproportionately appealing to young people. We have Santa Claus who is advertising marijuana. We have cartoon characters that are advertising marijuana.”
While the original goal of legalization helps to eliminate the stigma of criminal conviction for marijuana use, marketing hyper swings the pendulum toward a newfound level of societal acceptance. In conjunction with opening facilities and marketing, marijuana is modified in laboratories for enhancement and to create new products. The harmless marijuana of the 1970’s becomes extremely addictive as it has dangerously high levels of THC that can lead to hard-to-treat psychosis, especially in teenagers.
Luke Niforatos also discussed the genetic modification of marijuana.
(15:30) “What we’re seeing though, we were kind of pitched in Colorado, and this is happening across the country, oh, you know, marijuana is just a plant. It’s natural. God made it. God made poison ivy too. We shouldn’t smoke poison ivy. It’s natural plants, what we’re told. What we’re seeing after legalization is nothing even close to natural. This is stuff that’s cooked up in laboratories; in chemistry labs that’s being spliced and genetically modified. This is not being grown. This is being specifically bred to be much, much more potent. The potency that we’re seeing is astronomical. We went from an average of 3% potency [] to an average of 20% potency. [] We’re seeing some that are 90% potent. So, this drug has radically changed [] We’re talking about Wallstreet Marijuana and it’s more potent and its more addictive than it’s ever been before.”
Niforatos compared the increase in potency of marijuana to the difference between drinking 1 cola to drinking 33 medium cappuccinos.
According to The Market for Economic Impact of the Adult-Use Recreational Marijuana Industry in Michigan report prepared by Michigan State University in March 2020, “Consumers appear to be interested in products that have a higher concentration of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. In Colorado, from 2015 to the end of 2017, the THC content in flower increased from 16.6 percent to 19.9 percent and the THC content of trim increased from 14.9 percent to 17.2 percent (Orens et al, 2019).”
The report also discloses the shocking number of young people using marijuana.
This explains what Dr. Christian Thurstone, a Professor at Denver Health/University of Colorado, is seeing with psychiatric patients. Dr. Thurstone talked about hard-to-treat psychosis, caused by today’s potent marijuana, that he and his colleagues are seeing in the clinic, in the podcast Marijuana and our Children: The Blunt Truth.
(32:05) “In the clinical world we see this all the time; very sad cases of adolescents using high potency marijuana and developing psychosis schizophrenia that is very hard to treat. [] This is my experience and the experience of all the colleagues that I have talked with that it is a different type of psychosis that is hard to treat; doesn’t seem to respond to medications the way different types of psychoses do.
I’m attending on the inpatient unit now and I’m taking care of a young adolescent, 17 years old, from a great family, and a great upbringing, and smart, and athletic, and a heavy marijuana user in adolescence and now with the terrible, really hard to treat psychosis.”
Mayor McNally continued to share concerns on the effects of marijuana on the youth during the December 20, 2021, meeting of the Grand Haven City Council.
(4:02:50) “I personally know of five young men in our community whose lives were derailed by marijuana use. They were good kids from good families whose marijuana use, in one case led to a catastrophic accident. In another, to a felony conviction. In another, to a murdered roommate in a college dorm, and to a couple of others, simply dropping out of high school and never getting back on track. I know there are other similar stories out there. I heard a mother tell one at the planning commission last week. This is a very real problem, and our decision on this as a community, must take this into account. You can say that recreational pot shops will only sell to adults who are 21 or older, and you would be right. You can say these boys, and all the others could just as easily have lost their way through alcohol use, or without any illicit substance at all, and you would be right, but I look at the broader message about community values we send to our kids, to visitors, to public safety professionals, to neighboring communities, and to businesses that might consider investing, when we openly sell marijuana in our lovely, family-friendly, small town. It is simply the wrong thing to do.”
Voters in Michigan approved the use of recreational marijuana because they believe in free will, and they don’t believe people should face a lifetime of punishment and stigma for making personal choices. However, they did not want society to be transformed and youth to suffer long-term, hard-to-treat psychosis for making poor decisions. It seems legalizing marijuana may have introduced more problems than it was able to solve.