By R. Scott Rappold
WebMD Health News
Nov. 6, 2014 -- When the first legal sales of recreational marijuana in modern history began Jan. 1 in Colorado, it was a bold experiment fraught with unknowns.
Would kids get easy access to the drug? Would stoned drivers make the highways more dangerous? Would drug addiction problems increase?
While there isn’t enough data yet to answer some of those questions, one thing is clear: There is a rising tide of public support for marijuana legalization in America. Voters in Washington State approved it in 2012, and earlier this week, voters in Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, D.C., approved legalizing recreational marijuana.
Some of the lessons being learned in the Rocky Mountains could be instrumental in other states, as public health officials figure out how to regulate a drug that has been illegal for 8 decades.
Commercialization of Marijuana
Even before the first recreational stores opened in 2014, marijuana storefronts were a presence in most Colorado communities.
Since 2009, a loosening of regulations led to a growing medical marijuana industry, in which residents who received a doctor’s recommendation and applied for a state license could walk in and buy marijuana. There are today nearly 500 such dispensaries in Colorado.
Since Jan. 1, another 212 recreational stores have opened. In these stores, state residents 21 and over can buy up to an ounce of pot at a time. Out-of-state residents can buy a quarter-ounce. While some cities, including Colorado Springs, have banned the stores, in the Denver and Boulder areas and most resort towns, marijuana is visible and available.
Not everyone is happy about that. The mainstreaming of marijuana led Gina Carbone to co-found Smart Colorado, which calls for stricter regulations on the marijuana industry.
“What we’ve seen in the roll-out of this is the mass commercialization and the mass marketing of marijuana,” Carbone says.
“The more stores you have around, the more visibility, the more normalized it becomes, the greater the youth use is, because the perception of harm at the same time is plummeting,” she says.
Carbone would've preferred for Colorado to have followed the Washington model, where the number of marijuana stores are limited. Seattle, for example, will have just 21 stores.
Marijuana Edibles
When an adult comes to the University of Colorado Hospital complaining about ingesting too much marijuana, the symptoms are usually anxiety, nausea, or vomiting, but it’s not life-threatening unless associated with another substance or an injury.
But when a child comes in, emergency department head Richard Zane, MD, has observed instances of a breathing problem called respiratory depression, which can be life-threatening.
Since legalization, he has seen a sharp increase in such cases, and he points the finger at edibles infused with THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana.
source : Year 1 of Legal Marijuana: Lessons Learned in CO
