Well this sure is interesting as our country's police officers and prohibitionists claim that legalizing medical marijuana sales DOES increase teen use. I guess they just made that up! :(

Prohibitionists, like President Obama, like to label marijuana a "harmful substance", however marijuana is far LESS harmful than beer and wine which are LEGAL, and is also far LESS harmful than the federal marijuana prohibition which causes the arrest of 850,000 people every year and draws drug dealers into our communities and around our children!

It is outrageous to have the federal government ban stores from selling legally-grown marijuana to adults when this ban *doesn't* prevent people from buying, selling and using marijuana and it *does* make marijuana easily available to children by creating large profits for drug dealers where otherwise there would be NONE.

We've got it here in Colorado.

It works.

Ok good. Nobody wants young people using any type of intoxicants. They need to let their brains fully develop without any substances that could damage its development.

Now once people become adults then they should have the freedom, and liberty to use the intoxicant of their choice in a responsible manner. And if they manage to addict themselves to some hard-drug like heroin or cocaine then they need to be treated in a medical setting and not through the prison system.

And then as a country we need to tax these intoxicants and add the revenue to the treasury.

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By now most people should know that the motto of the Know Nothing prohibitionist is "never let the facts stand in the way of disseminating an effective piece of hysterical rhetoric," and the claim of increased youth use is one of the most effective, although totally false pieces of hysterical rhetoric in their bag of tricks. There isn't a State with a medicinal cannabis patient protection law that's suffered a statistically significant increase in youth use. Not a single one.

In Montana earlier this year the Know Nothing prohibitionists managed to push through de facto repeal of their medicinal cannabis patient protection law with this jewel of a bald faced lie as their centerpiece. They went as far as to trot out a teenage trollop who claimed to have prostituted herself to get "medical" merrywanna. It was unfortunate that it was a month after they managed to sell this nonsense to the foaming at the mouth legislature that the results of the bi-annual survey was released. Overall teen cannabis use was down 2% in the 2 year period between 2009 and 2011 and down 4% between 1999 and 2011. Yes, considering the margin of error those numbers are unchanged to slightly down for all intents and purposes, but still a long, long, way away from the high school class of 2015 standing on the corner selling their bodies to get "medical" merrywanna.

The good news is that the Montana law passed based on the fraud of increased youth use will be on the ballot in 2012, with the evidence of the Know Nothings' perfidy front and center for the voters' consideration.

We often here the "what kind of message will it send" rhetoric, well I ask you, what kind of message does it send the children when public policy is based on nothing more than a pack of bald faced lies, half truths, and hysterical rhetoric?

Well duh... People who want to smoke are going to get it. Making it legal for medical use is not going to change the minds of more teens. They are still going to smoke it if they want to. It isn't hard to get. This law doesnt make it easier. It just makes it legal for certain uses...

Laws are generally irrelevent to those who use MJ and this creates a culture of "if MJ laws wrong and should be ignored then other laws are meanigless too"

Legalization would create a culture of obeying other laws.

I take addictive meds to stay alive. What does it matter if they are addictive if I need them 24/7 anyway?

I do not recall ever hearing of anyone being treated for MJ addiction unless it was to get a sentencing reduction, usually for posession.

A 13 yr old recently died of plastic fumes after smoking an O.T.C. substance in a PEZ dispenser. The substance was banned but PEZ dispensers are still legal.

It was headlined as synthetic MJ even though it contained absolutely no MJ or chemical bearing any resemblance to it. (in Pittsburg PA)

If I remember right...prescription Vicodin or oxycodone are the most abused "legal" drug by teens at the moment. Much of it has been stolen from their parents.

I'd be willing to bet alcohol being readily available in any number of stores spurred a lot more teen use in Rhode Island than the legalization of medical marijuana did for the same group of individuals in relation to their marijuana use.

How many teens did Marijuana kill last year compared to Alcohol? I'd imagine the disparity between the two figures is quite astronomical...

However in somewhat related news..

My 9 yr old clipped a picture of the President chugging a beer at yet another of his 'beer summits' for his 'in the news' project at school.

Marijuana will continue to be used and distributed. So the choice is to have the distribution through legal venues, by licensed, responsible, tax paying and law abiding business people, or by Black Market Dealers. IT IS ONE OR THE OTHER!! Obviously politicians and other ignorant people endorse the later.

The model is in place for marijuana legalization: Just treat it EXACTLY as we do alcohol. Legalization and Regulation will do more to keep marijuana out of the hands of minors than all the ridiculous laws against it ever have.
Oh, do you have a citation about the addictiveness of marijuana? TIA
Dems and reps, different pages from the same bad book!
LEAP.cc

Yeah, because the legalization of medical marijuana made kids feels it was ok to talk about their substance abuse...

Get real. What a dumb "study".

It's great to have scientific evidence in hand so we can make wise decisions about this drug. It's a shame to withhold it from people who have a medical need for it based upon superstition and prejudice from 80 years ago.

It's past time to legalise it and tax it to reduce the deficit.

I'm definitely against prohibition of marijuana in general for all the reasons mentioned here and then some, but I have to say that its illegality has made it impossible to come by for me these last few years. If you're not well connected in a low density population area and not willing to take chances for the sake of your family (and work for that matter), then you're SOL. It really used to help my fibromyalgia and anxiety levels, but I'll just have to hope against hope that it will some day be legal. Kids are more likely to be better connected and less cautious, so the likelihood that my young boys will try it someday sooner than I'd like is a little scary for me, esp. w/the prospects of being sold fake mj or mj laced w/the ruinous likes of formaldehyde. It just seems so grossly unfair to sentence a teenager w/normal curiosity for mj w/the prospect of unnecessary ill health outcomes or worse, not to mention the risk of buying anything black market! When will we ever wise up?