Colorado Chief Health Officer: Marijuana Legalization Hasn’t Done Much
Legal cannabis in Colorado hasnt caused many issues or changes.
Larry Wolk is the executive director of Colorados Department of Public Health and Environment. This makes him the top government health official in the first state to allow over-the-counter sales of recreational marijuana and, as such, a leading authority on what cannabis does (and doesnt) do to the body and to the body politic.
Wolk is also a skeptic. Reacting to several recently published studies (and one to be released soon) linking the availability of legal marijuana with a decrease in opiate overdoses and opiate-overdose related death, Wolk preached caution. Its too early to say cannabis will solve the opiate crisis,he told the Denver Post, and the initial findings that legal cannabis in Colorado reduced fatal overdoses in that state by 6.5 percent are just that: preliminary data.
But Wolkcantell you what marijuana legalization does to a place, broadly. And in the years since Colorado voters legalized cannabis in November 2012 and states began on Jan. 1, 2014, Wolk has had to deal with well, not much at all.
Colorado officials have seen no significant issues as a result of legalization,Wolk told a radio morning-show broadcast on tiny Prince Edward Island in Canada, where Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus Liberal government is set to follow American states leads and legalize marijuana for all adults 21 and over next summer.
This is true across the board. There have been no major changes in youth use. There have been no major changes in how much adults use. There have been no massive sick-outs, no lost productivity, no spike in truancy at schools. There has been no massive increased in stoned driving. There has been an increase in the number of pot-related calls to poison-control centers, but its slight, and could be attributed solely to the fact that cannabis is legal, and callers are more forthcoming and honest about the fact they (or their kid) just ate weed.
The short answer is we havent seen much, said Wolk, according to the CBC.
About the only perceptible change was a tiny rise in the number of people seeking medical attention at hospitals after consuming marijuana but even here, theres a major asterisk. Most of those people, Wolk told the CBC, were from out of town,less-famous Maureen Dowd who failed to heed the warning labels on edibles and became too stoned for comfort.
Its important to remember that Wolk is no friend to the cannabis industry.In 2014, Wolk called from a blanket ban on allmarijuana edibles, declaring them too similar to candy and therefore a temptation for youth. Wolk also believes that marijuana and alcohol should never mixunwelcome news at any place in Colorado where beer is sold, which is many, many placesand that the most appropriate age to begin using cannabis is probably closer to 25 than it is 21.
Which is exactly ...
