In last week’s eNotes, I described the Arkansas Religious Freedom Amendment and how imperative it is that we do all we can to assure its success in November’s general election. This eNotes will deal with the Arkansas Adult Use Cannabis Amendment and stress how important it is that we defeat this very bad piece of public policy – a policy to bring recreational marijuana use with all its undesirable effects to the Natural State.
Where you read “cannabis” in the name of the amendment, think marijuana – high potency, harmful, and dangerous marijuana. Where you read “adult use,” know the results – whether purposeful or unintended – will be a dramatic increase of the percentages of young people using the drug and becoming dependent and, in some cases, addicted to it.
Space here is limited, so we will share some of the more salient reasons that just about the last thing our state and its people need is for a few marijuana growers and sellers to have a monopoly and virtually unfettered license to market their dangerous wares. First, the amendment will not allow the state legislature or any local government body to enact laws to control the marijuana business.
The marijuana today is not the marijuana of the 1970s. People who wrongly believe that marijuana is not a big deal simply are woefully uninformed and that lack of knowledge is dangerous in this context. In the 70s, the concentration of THC, the psychoactive component of marijuana, was roughly 1-3 percent. Over the years, the plant has been genetically engineered to contain a greater percentage of THC, and was 17.1 percent in 2017 (up from 8.9 percent in 2008).
And the percentage of THC continues to climb. In THC concentrates, like gummies and edibles (that are particularly enticing to children and very harmful when consumed by them), the concentration of THC reached 55.7 percent in 2017. This relentless demand for stronger marijuana is fraught with danger. The following bullet point statements are an attempt to bring some of the more significant problems to light, but suffice it so say there is a large amount of accurate, reliable, empirical evidence to make a solid case against legalization of recreational marijuana. What follows is just a small sampling. However, the evidence I speak of is readily available and accessible, so one should avail himself of it.
• Mental health can suffer. Marijuana has been shown in studies to be significantly linked to psychosis, schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety. Daily users of potent marijuana have four-times the odds of developing psychosis.
• Researchers have found a connection between marijuana use and lung damage, cardiovascular ailments, including hypertension, myocardial infarction, cardiomyopathy, arrhythmias, stroke, and cardiac arrest.
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