By Christian Thurstone
Source: Denver Post

Denver -- Colorado's public policies regarding the use of medical marijuana are a complete mess — and as the medical director of a busy adolescent substance abuse treatment program in Denver, I get to contend with this mess every day.

Take, for example, the 19-year-old whom I have treated for severe addiction for several months. He recently showed up in my clinic with a medical marijuana license. How did he get it? Easy, he said. He paid $300 for a brief visit with another doctor to discuss his "depression." The doctor took a cursory medical history that certainly didn't involve contacting me.

The teenager walked out with the paperwork needed not only for a license to smoke, but also for a license permitting a "caregiver" to grow up to six marijuana plants for him. My patient, who had quit using addictive substances after a near-death experience, is back to smoking marijuana daily, along with his caregiver.

So, that's just one young person who managed to game the system, right? Not by a long shot.

In the last three months, I have seen more than a dozen young people — all between the ages of 18 and 25 and with histories of substance abuse — who received from other doctors what are essentially permission slips to smoke pot. Some of my colleagues recently reported seeing a young, pregnant woman who was granted a license to smoke marijuana because of her nausea. (Yes, you read that right.) Kids without licenses tell me about the potent pot they buy from from caregivers whose plants yield enough supply to support sales on the side.

Colorado schools are also scrambling to make sense of our muddled public policies. Educators ask me how to deal with students who have marijuana prescriptions for their attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and with the "medical marijuana specialists" seen passing out business cards in student parking lots. Here's what I tell them: Good research shows that using marijuana makes anxiety, depression and ADHD worse, so let's stop prescribing marijuana to our youth.

Colorado is just beginning to see much bigger and more costly problems associated with teen marijuana smoking. That's particularly unfortunate because our state already ranks among the top five for adolescent marijuana use and among states providing the least access to adolescent substance abuse treatment.

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Complete Article: http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_14289807

Source: Denver Post (CO)
Author: Christian Thurstone
Published: January 31, 2010
Copyright: 2010 The Denver Post Corp
Website: http://www.denverpost.com/
Contact: openforum@denverpost.com