Youth Led, Adult Guided ~ National Youth Leadership Initiative 

with CADCA (Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America)

by Zach Fincher

Alongside Alex Mcintire and Arlo Harold, Rock Solid and H.O.T.S. (Helping Out Teens Society) members, representing the San Juan Island Prevention Coalition, we went to a CADCA training in Seattle for a three day lesson on how to stop substance abuse of all kinds, particularly for underage youth.

When I started getting into our local prevention organization, I didn’t think that I would go to a National Prevention Conference and for my second time, no less. The other two had not attended a CADCA training before, so I had to teach them what we did last time. It was good for me to go over it, as well. The conference was jam packed with information and activities to help us understand how we as young people can led change in our communities. The term they used was “Change Agent”.  We focused on policy change and how we have a voice and how to take initiative for a cause. I would recommend this experience to other teens wanting to change their community for the better. And, sharpen your own personal leadership skills.

Our team will be focusing on underage marijuana use in our community. Unfortunately, most of the Youth Prevention Teams from Washington State were also having to focus on this issue in their communities, too. Most likely due to the passing of the I-502 law making pot legal for recreational use for anyone 21 years and older. Unfortunately, this seems to make marijuana easier for youth to get their hands on and people seem to think it’s not harmful since it’s “legal”. We are learning environmental strategies to help protect the youth in our communities. We hope to work with our local community leaders and look for ways we can reduce the underage use of marijuana in our community. We hope you will consider supporting our prevention efforts to help kids choose health as they grow and develop. Thank you!

Cynthia Stark-Wickman, our SJIPC Executive Coordinator shares, “The opportunity for San Juan Island youth to participate in the National Youth Leadership Initiative (NYLI) is a dream come true for me as the Executive Coordinator for San Juan Island Prevention Coalition! Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America’s (CADCA) leadership in Washington, D.C., has carried forward a vision of youth leadership development that is at the highest level of honoring and empowering youth as the leaders of TODAY.  The fact that Washington State’s Division of Behavioral Health and Recovery (DBHR) helped to bring this training to Seattle also demonstrates their belief in youth leadership.  Our youth team was able to network with the Lopez Island Prevention Coalition team, as well as with nearly 200 youth from Washington, Oregon, Alaska, and other states across the nation.  I am proud of their hard work and the courage to take on this challenge!  Thank you!”

Your participation in this community survey helps San Juan Island to respond to needs and gain resources to help prevent underage substance abuse.  Please take five to ten minutes to complete the following survey of 19 questions.  Thank you!

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• December 04, 2015
• By Sarah Breitenbach 

  The Pew Charitable Trusts  Research & Analysis

   

  http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline#s=Relevance/sortDir=asc/pg=0/count=9/content=59fe81ce-f007-4fa1-a82e-a1579d6643bd

© The Associated Press

Sgt. Michael DiVita collects unused prescription pills on National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day in 2012. New DEA rules in 2014 allow pharmacies to collect unwanted controlled substances; some local officials want drugmakers to pay for drug disposals.

Story has been corrected to say Nebraska’s take-back program uses state funds only.

Each month Monty Scheele, a pharmacist in Lincoln, Nebraska, sends a big box of unused medications to be incinerated.

He collects the drugs at his three pharmacies from customers who may be cleaning out their medicine cabinets or abandoning a prescription after an adverse reaction. His effort is part of a program using state funds to keep medications from polluting water supplies and out of the hands of people who might misuse them.

But drug disposal is expensive — the Nebraska program spends $10 per pound to ship and destroy medication — and some states and municipalities want drug companies to pick up the tab.

Six municipalities in California require drugmakers to pay for take-backs. Nine states — California, Florida, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington — have considered similar measures. Another such proposal is in front of the Massachusetts Legislature.

Proponents say these laws, which are similar to programs that require manufacturers to pay for electronics recycling, would make it easier for patients to dispose of prescriptions. But drugmakers oppose the local mandates and warn that disposal costs could be passed on to patients through higher drug prices.

Alameda County in California was the first jurisdiction to pass a law requiring manufacturers to pay for take-backs, in 2012, though the industry was quick to file suit, arguing it violated the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. The Alameda law was upheld this year when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the industry’s appeal.

That law initially applied to “non-controlled substances,” including antibiotics and over-the-counter drugs, because until last year, only law enforcement could accept more strictly controlled substances like oxycodone, morphine and Valium. But last year, the Drug Enforcement Administration issued new rules allowing DEA-registered pharmacies, drugmakers, hospitals and narcotics treatment centers to take back controlled substances, though pharmacies across the country appear reluctant to get involved.

Heidi Sanborn, director of the California Product Stewardship Council — a network of local governments, nongovernmental organizations and businesses that want producers to be responsible for the proper disposal of their products — helped pass the Alameda law. She points to other countries, like Canada and Mexico, which have had drug take-back programs for years.

“People [in the industry] are making this out to be super complicated and really hard, but the truth is that we can put a man on the moon, don’t tell me we can’t figure out how to collect pills,” Sanborn said.

It was the industry’s opposition to a California-wide version of the Alameda law that led advocates to focus on passing county-level measures instead, she added.

Drugmakers would rather lead their own take-back programs than comply with local or state mandates, said Priscilla VanderVeer, of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a plaintiff in the Alameda case.

Because drugmakers sell across the country, meeting the customized disposal requirements of local programs is complicated, VanderVeer said. There are also more effective ways to get rid of the medicines, she said, like at-home disposal or returning unwanted drugs using special envelopes with carbon lining.

“That’s just a financial and logistical nightmare for something that’s not necessarily going to be effective, or secure or environmentally helpful,” she said.

Public Health Crisis 

Take-back advocates want to get unused opioid painkillers and other highly addictive medications out of circulation so they cannot be abused or sold to recreational users.

Scheele, the Nebraska pharmacist, has begun to use secure lockboxes where customers can return their controlled medications under the new DEA rules. He said he was apprehensive about adding a lockbox, on top of his existing efforts, because it would bring excess amounts of highly desired drugs to his pharmacies. But the security of the metal boxes, which are bolted to the floor and the wall, has diminished that concern.

“I’m really glad to see this stuff get out of the community,” he said, noting that he would continue to use the lockboxes even if the funding for Nebraska’s program disappeared.

About 110 Americans die each day from a drug overdose. More than half of those deaths are attributed to opioids, including painkillers. And 70 percent of people who misuse painkillers report getting the drugs from a friend or a relative.

Marcia Mueting, with the Nebraska Pharmacists Association, said it makes sense for patients to return unused medications to pharmacies because they have relationships with their pharmacists, who can inquire about why a patient did not finish a medication and potentially identify adverse reactions.

“At the point when you decide that I no longer want this medication in my home, you should be able to take it somewhere,” she said.

More than half of Nebraska’s 500 pharmacies are doing take-backs. The program began in Lincoln and Lancaster County in 2012 and went statewide earlier this year. Since 2012, more than 14,800 pounds of drugs have been taken back.

Many participating pharmacies are small and independently owned. Some larger pharmacy chains have rules that prevent them from collecting the drugs, Mueting said.

VanderVeer argued that take-back programs are not a panacea and patients won’t be willing to make frequent trips to a pharmacy with their medications. The industry would rather focus on educating consumers about at-home disposal, she said.

“It’s sort of like recycling: the easier you make it for people, the more likely they are to comply,” VanderVeer said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration advises that some medications can be flushed down toilets or sinks, but that others should be removed from their original containers and mixed with undesirable substances like used coffee grounds or cat litter (to deter people from using them) and then sealed in a plastic bag before being thrown away.

Environmental Impact 

Sealing and disposing of medications in the trash is supposed to be safe, but studies have found that even treated liquid waste from landfills still contains contaminants, and that drugs in water supplies are affecting fish.

It is unclear just how much groundwater contamination comes from flushed drugs versus human waste, said Cindy Kreifels, an executive at the Groundwater Foundation, a Nebraska nonprofit.

“Obviously we need to get the pharmaceuticals out of all water bodies,” she said, and take-back programs are important because the first step in cleaning up groundwater is getting people not to flush their medications.

Kreifels said there had not been any studies of contamination in Nebraska’s water since the take-backs began in 2012.

The United Way of San Juan County supports the San Juan Island Prevention Coalition’s Youth Leadership Initiative and Challenge program annually.  This funding is critical to continue our positive impact with youth, growing children and teens who are empowered to lead the way into a bright future for us all.

One of the ways we give back to United Way is by participating in their annual Day of Caring event which gathers folks from all the organizations who benefit from United Way’s support.  At this event, teams of volunteers complete tasks that help community members throughout the County.  This year the Day of Caring event became “extended” when Alice Hibberd, representing the San Juan Island Prevention Coalition, volunteered her skills at the Village at the Harbour.

Alice came to the “game hour” three times Thanksgiving week to learn from and share some old tricks with the dear residents who look forward to playing bingo and other games each day.  The residents thoroughly enjoy bingo as it is a steady part of their routine.  Alice remembered how her mother looked forward to bingo when she and her father were volunteers for the local fire company in Brick, N.J. where she grew up.  She also remembered how important card games were in her own family.  Her mother, grandmothers and aunts played cards regularly and all the kids learned, too.  So, to stir things up at “game hour”, Alice brought in a jumbo deck of cards (easy for residents to use), a deck Alice uses for team building activities through the SJIPC’s Challenge program.  Adapting the old fashioned card games of “Concentration” and “Go Fish” so residents could relax into and enjoy some new challenges, the group gained a sense of “team” as they helped each other while learning together.  Alice was tickled to see the smiles of joy, hear some fun teasing between friends, and watch folks “lean on each other” for support as needed.  Just like games and activities used in the SJIPC Challenge program, these simple card games became inspiration for growth and teamwork with residents at the Village at the Harbour. Young at Heart!

Marijuana Use During Pregnancy
Exposes Mom and Baby to Health Risks

The October/November 2015 issue of Nursing for Women’s Health, the clinical practice journal of the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses, published an article that addresses best practices for nurses working in this field. Some 10 percent of pregnant women use marijuana during their pregnancy. This poses health risks to themselves and their babies, in some cases even before mothers-to-be know they are pregnant.

“Consuming marijuana in large doses can result in acute marijuana intoxication, with symptoms including rapid heart rate, anxiety, paranoia, and even hallucinations,” say the authors.

“Marijuana can enter the bloodstream within seconds, the brain within minutes, and cross the placenta to reach the fetus. Repeated marijuana use can also alter receptors in the brain during fetal development as early as two weeks after conception, leading to problems with attention, memory, and problem solving.

“Marijuana exposure can also affect an infant’s birth weight, decrease length of gestation, and increase risk for preterm labor,” they warn.

The article advises nurses who care for pregnant women to screen them for drug use, including marijuana use, at the first prenatal visit to safeguard the health of both mother and baby.

Read Medical Express News article here.

The Marijuana Report is a weekly e-newsletter produced by National Families in Action in partnership with SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana). Subscribe to The Marijuana Report and visit our website, The Marijuana Report.Org, to learn more about the marijuana story unfolding across the nation.

NFIA consists of families, scientists, business leaders, physicians, addiction specialists, policymakers, and others committed to protecting children from addictive drugs. Our vision is:

• Healthy, drug-free kids
• Nurturing, addiction-free families
• Scientifically accurate information and education
• A nation free of Big Marijuana
• Smart, safe, FDA-approved medicines developed from the cannabis plant (and other plants)
• Expanded access to medicines in FDA clinical trials for children with epilepsy

About SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana)

SAM is a nonpartisan alliance of lawmakers, scientists and other concerned citizens who want to move beyond simplistic discussions of “incarceration versus legalization” when discussing marijuana use and instead focus on practical changes in marijuana policy that neither demonizes users nor legalizes the drug. SAM supports a treatment, health-first marijuana policy.

SAM has four main goals:

• To inform public policy with the science of today’s marijuana.
• To reduce the unintended consequences of current marijuana policies, such as lifelong stigma due to arrest.
• To prevent the establishment of “Big Marijuana” – and a 21st-Century tobacco industry that would market marijuana to children.
• To promote research of marijuana’s medical properties and produce, non-smoked, non-psychoactive pharmacy-attainable medications.

A first-of-its-kind study of the effects of high-potency marijuana on brain structure shows it can damage the corpus callosum (imaged above), a huge section of white matter that consists of nerve fibers responsible for communicating between the two halves of the brain. This part of the brain is rich in receptors to which THC binds.

Study results “reflect a sliding scale where the more cannabis you smoke and the higher the potency, the worse the damage will be,” says Dr. Paoloa Dazzan, reader in neurobiology of psychosis at the institute of psychiatry, psychology, and neuroscience at King’s College London and senior researcher of the study.

Scientists recruited 56 people reporting a first-episode psychosis and 43 people without psychosis and administered clinical and brain imaging assessments to all. The structure of the white matter of high-potency marijuana users in both groups – those with and those without psychosis – was significantly damaged.

High-potency marijuana they used contained from 16-22% THC and 0.1% CBD. The Brits call this “high-potency” and “skunk,” while U.S. marijuana dispensaries and pot shops in legal states call this average. Here, marijuana concentrates such as wax or shatter contain much higher levels of THC, from 50-75%.

The researchers note that their study cannot confirm that THC caused the structural changes – it may be that people with damaged white matter are more likely to smoke marijuana. But what they can say is that if you smoke marijuana frequently and it is high-potency, your brain is different from the brains of those who use low-potency marijuana infrequently or not at all.

Read The Guardian article here. Read Science Daily article here. Read Psychological Medicine study here.

The Marijuana Report is a weekly e-newsletter produced by National Families in Action in partnership with SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana). Subscribe to The Marijuana Report and visit our website, The Marijuana Report.Org, to learn more about the marijuana story unfolding across the nation.

NFIA consists of families, scientists, business leaders, physicians, addiction specialists, policymakers, and others committed to protecting children from addictive drugs. Our vision is:

• Healthy, drug-free kids
• Nurturing, addiction-free families
• Scientifically accurate information and education
• A nation free of Big Marijuana
• Smart, safe, FDA-approved medicines developed from the cannabis plant (and other plants)
• Expanded access to medicines in FDA clinical trials for children with epilepsy

About SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana)

SAM is a nonpartisan alliance of lawmakers, scientists and other concerned citizens who want to move beyond simplistic discussions of “incarceration versus legalization” when discussing marijuana use and instead focus on practical changes in marijuana policy that neither demonizes users nor legalizes the drug. SAM supports a treatment, health-first marijuana policy.

SAM has four main goals:

• To inform public policy with the science of today’s marijuana.
• To reduce the unintended consequences of current marijuana policies, such as lifelong stigma due to arrest.
• To prevent the establishment of “Big Marijuana” – and a 21st-Century tobacco industry that would market marijuana to children.
• To promote research of marijuana’s medical properties and produce, non-smoked, non-psychoactive pharmacy-attainable medications.

Five myths about marijuana and society

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/10/five_myths_about_marijuana_and_society.html#ixzz3rIrsINpj
Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook

These myths show up in a variety of channels in media and elsewhere, notably the pro-marijuana websites, which are eager to draw in more customers so they can make more money.

Here are their myths and the counterarguments.

Myth 1: Tax revenues from marijuana sales will benefit government budgets

Let’s do a comparison. Alcohol creates costs to society through criminal conduct, treatment, unemployment, and healthcare. In Arizona, for every dollar that the government collects through taxes, society pays out $10.00 in those costs (Bennett and White 104).

Nationally, by taxing tobacco and alcohol, we collect $40 billion annually, but we about lose $400 billion annually from lost productivity, premature illness, accidents and death (104-05).

So it is true that Colorado has collected an estimated $12 million to $21 million from January to July 2014, from marijuana sales (the figures vary). But it is not difficult to predict, from the numbers for alcohol and tobacco, that the social monetary costs will far exceed the taxes. Pew Charitable Trust predicts taxes will fall short by 46 percent (107).

Myth 2: Holland is unqualified success stories

Holland doesn’t use the word legalization, since it violates international law. But they decriminalized it in 1976.

Holland has also discovered some problems with decriminalizing marijuana. From 1976 to the early 1980s there was little change in its consumption. Then the “coffee shops” found out they can increase customer usage by advertizing and allowing foreigners and tourists to buy their product. In 1996, seeing the results, five hundred local communities were given the choice to allow such coffee shops within their jurisdictions or not, and three-quarters said no.

As normalization of marijuana worked its way through Dutch society, marijuana usage across the population more than doubled from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. For users between eighteen- to twenty-year-olds, use went from 15 percent in 1984 to 44 percent in 1996, or nearly 300 percent.

Finally, observing this deterioration, the Dutch had had enough. In 2011, they scaled back lenient laws, banned tourists from going to coffee shops selling marijuana, and reclassified marijuana as a hard drug along with cocaine (Sabet 142-43).

Thus, Holland is the shining “city on a hill” that the weed advocates would have us believe –unless the city and hill are shrouded in a certain kind of smoke.

Myth 3: the War on Drugs is a failure

To back up that myth, a commonly used historical comparison is cited: Prohibition of Alcohol (1921-1933). Many believe it also was a failure, so the War on Drugs has to be a similar failure.

However, Mark H. Moore, a professor of criminal justice at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, concludes from his study that Prohibition worked in several areas of society. First, alcohol consumption declined significantly, as seen in the decline in deaths from alcohol-related cirrhosis of the liver: from 29.5 per 100,000 in men before Prohibition to 10.7 deaths per 100,000 during the ban. Second, mental hospital admission for alcoholic psychosis went down from 10.1 per 1000,000 persons to less than 5 at the peak of prohibition. Third, arrests for drunk and disorderly conduct fell by half. Fourth, homicide rates rose from 1900-1910 (before Prohibition), but remain roughly constant during Prohibition (Sabet 118; Bennett and White 108). It’s not hard to predict that incidents of alcohol-related domestic violence similarly declined.

Further, a small example of prohibition succeeding can be seen in Barrow, Alaska, which outlawed alcohol in 1994. The city saw crime decrease by 70 percent; alcohol-related emergency room visits went from 123 to only 23, from the first month before the ban to the month after it. Once the ban was lifted, due to the pro-alcohol push, local detoxification centers filled with patients, and alcohol-related murders rose (Sabet 119).

What about drug use generally after we began the War on Drugs? In 1979, there were over 25 million drug users — over 23 million of them marijuana users — in a population of about 225 million. By 1992 went down to 12 million. In other words, 14 percent abused drugs in 1979; by 1992, it declined to 3.4 percent, with a population of 248 million Americans (Bennett and White 112).

A reasonable person should call the War on Drugs a success by any measure.

But then come the web and the weed advocate websites telling us how miraculous legalization would be for society.

Myth 4: Prisons and jails are overcrowded with marijuana offenders

On these websites one reads figures that legalizing marijuana would save the criminal justice system billions of dollars, but these data do not break down offenders by drugs and multiply marijuana’s share of arrests for drug sale and manufacture (Caulkins et al. 130).

The best estimates are that all drug violations account for about one-fifth of incarcerations, and marijuana-only incarcerations account for less than 10 percent of the one-fifth, less than two percent (130).

Myth 5: Drug cartels would disappear after marijuana legalization

This myth is related to the one about the War on Drugs.

In Colorado, Mexican cartels are eager to get involved in legalized marijuana. There has been zero decline in black market marijuana growth and production, as the drug trafficking organizations control about 65 percent of operations in Colorado forests. Crime around dispensaries, such as outright robbery, has gone up (Bennett and White 137).

Black markets and sumptuary laws work together. The Tax Foundation reports that smuggled cigarettes cut into the retail markets by 55 percent in New York, 50 percent in Arizona, New Mexico, and Washington. The black marketers are trying to beat the high tax on and the high price of cigarettes (105). The same profit motive for legal marijuana will create a similar black market, to beat the “sin” tax.

The truth is that cartels have strong motives to stay involved with marijuana (and other drugs, along with prostitution, gambling, and other vices), so the cartels and black markets will never disappear, and law enforcement will always have to stay in the fight.

Let’s wrap this up.

The human and monetary social cost of legalizing marijuana is too high. It normalizes and commercializes the product, thus lowering the barrier that the law erects. Impressionable youths will see nothing wrong with smoking or eating it. “It’s legal, man!”

Legalization won’t cure state and local budgets by taxing the product, when they have to spend a lot more money in other areas of society that marijuana degrades and damages.

Related crimes and black markets will still persist.

It is best if we keep the status quo of illegality, but reduce sentencing for simple possession of a small amount and impose a large fine or jail time for selling it or for possessing a huge amount.

States that have legalized it by the ballot initiative have acted unwisely because the medical community says the product is unsafe.

And no reputable private or governmental institute – certainly not the FDA – recommends smoking or eating marijuana in self-administered, unstandardized doses to cure or treat diseases and pain.

Therefore the states that have legalized it for recreational or medical purposes must educate themselves and vote to repeal the law.

And states that are thinking about doing so must not go down this path.

James Arlandson, Ph.D. (1994), has taught college and university for years. His website is Live as Free People.