It’s Time We Started Really
Paying Attention to This Weed
“Experiment” in Colorado
As I come to the end of this book, I am left scratching my head and asking, “How are so many smart people missing this?”
When I was in the heavy research and writing phase of this proj-ect, I sequestered myself from just about all media. I cut out reading for enjoyment and watching much of anything that wasn’t related to weed. To celebrate the finished manuscript, my wife and I rented a movie and planned a date night to watch The Big Short, the film about the credit and housing bubble collapse of the mid-2000s, fueled by greed and corruption. At the end of the film we were both sitting there thinking the same thing, she said it first: “It’s the same thing as weed right now.” My wife was referring to the housing market bust and how the entire world, with a few exceptions, turned a blind eye. She wasn’t saying that this was going to explode and cripple the economy or anything like that, just that the world was ignoring an issue that would be impossible to ignore in the near future. It’s amazing what people will believe when it’s packaged up nice and shiny, and when they think everyone else thinks the same thing: somebody has to be looking out for us, right?
Well, bad news my friends, nobody is looking out for us and we are being played. This whole commercialized THC thing isn’t going to end well.
I’m going on record saying this so that when the finger-pointing starts in a few years, I can rest easier knowing at least I threw it out there. I saw some data that the state released in its first report1 mandated by the Colorado House of Representatives in 2016. Between the painfully whitewashed veneer and attempts at putting the best foot forward was some straight scary stuff—and nobody seems to be paying attention.
That same week, I had a day in treatment where the only two people who checked in were there for weed, just plain old weed. One of them described the psychosis he felt in detail when he smoked without knowing there was a word for what he was describing.
I also spoke with a brilliant chemist who walked my wife and me through the science and explained, over the course of hours, how all of the estimates of potency in weed in Colorado are low, and that we are just starting to realize how behind The Industry we are. For those of you unfamiliar with the potency issue when I got sober in 1996 weed was about 4 percent THC (that’s the part of the plant that gets you high). Today the national average is above 12 percent and Colorado is seeing THC in plant concentrations of over 40 percent and concentrates that top 95 percent THC.
Additionally, a huge study2 was released showing that people who started smoking weed in adolescence had decidedly shorter lives than those who hadn’t. This, in addition to the well-established link between early frequent use and psychosis.3
Then, a group of Southern Colorado hospitals came out publicly in opposition to retail THC shops in their community of Pueblo. The Colorado Springs newspaper The Gazette reported that at one hospital, “nearly half of the newborns born last month at their facility who were drug tested due to suspected pre-natal exposure tested positive for marijuana.”
Colorado now has the highest marijuana use rates in the nation, with 33 percent of users reported using THC daily. While overall arrests for marijuana were down statewide, people under eighteen made up almost half of all those arrested for THC in 2014, almost double from 2012. And while fewer white kids were arrested for weed, many more minority youths were: 29 percent Hispanic and 58 percent black youths.
Mandated treatment for driving under the influence increased 48 percent for weed as the primary drug listed since its commercialization.
Meanwhile, it was 4/20, the official weed holiday in Colorado, and everywhere I turned people were making jokes about it, lighting up, and the advertisements were everywhere; they were relentless. Every celebrity stoner on earth came to Denver for a concert, show, or whatever and several of them got so wasted they couldn’t perform. It happens all the time but this felt bigger since so many were affected and I was considering all of the above-mentioned facts.
Here is what I think will occur. The data will show a worsening situation but fewer people in power will pay attention to it. Even if lawmakers do eventually wake up to what is really happening, by this time The THC Industry will be dug in like a tick and we will have a hell of a time reining them in. Their hefty political donations will continue to immobilize lawmakers. By the time we’ve reached a point where lawmakers have to act, such a large portion of the population in Colorado will be consuming THC that it would be like trying to bring a “don’t drink wine” message to France.
As perceived risk continues to drop due to advertising campaigns by The Industry, youth use will continue to increase. As weed gets even stronger and concentrates play a larger role in our culture, mental health will suffer in ways that will be obvious to those of us in the field but tough to measure. With nobody challenging The Industry spin machine, their messaging will be all that people hear. It will take original and critical thought to see through that spin, but right now I see little to none of that now.
Traffic safety won’t get any better because impaired drivers will continue to do their thing at higher levels, and prosecuting them will get harder because of current cases as well as the erosion of the 5ng/ml threshold, so fewer will be arrested. Those who are arrested will be able to mount more successful defenses as case law grows.
As the next generation grows up in a place where pervasive THC use is accepted and even encouraged, we will see the harmful effects of weed on the brain and body play out much faster because they will be using stronger stuff more often at earlier ages.
Politicians will bury their heads in the sand when public health and law enforcement talks and hold their hands outstretched when The Industry lobbyists walk into the room. Laws will change slowly no matter how much the population yells because money drives this country, not public health or concern for our future, unless of course that future is next quarter’s returns.
This isn’t going to end well, for us in Colorado at least. Many of you call Colorado the “experiment.” I think the “sacrificial lamb” might be more accurate. Pay attention so that the problems manifested here from this failed experiment are not repeated more often than necessary. Learn from the mistakes made, and let the damage done in my home state be a warning to yours. The grass isn’t greener on this side.
1 Marijuana Legalization in Colorado: Early Findings, March 2016, produced by the Colorado Department of Public Safety
2 American Journal of Psychiatry, April 22, 2016, “Cannabis, Psychosis and Mortality: A Cohort Study of 50,373 Swedish Men.”
3 The Lancet, volume 5, no 5, pages 380-81, Published May 2015.