The article “McKee’s $12.8 billion plan injects cash, avoids tax, fee increases” published in The Newport Daily News (Jan. 22, 2022), detailed the governor’s tax and spending plan for the state budget beginning on July 1 of this year.
According to the article, McKee’s plan would also seek to legalize recreational marijuana, with the expectation that pot shops would open in 2023.
Last December, The Providence Journal featured a detailed account about the devastating effects of the current pandemic, unemployment, and homelessness on the youngsters in Michigan’s Van Buren Intermediate School District (“‘Overwhelmed’ students get emotional help,” December 2021).
It was heartbreaking to read, but what really caught my attention was the following statement: “Three student suicide attempts since in-person school resumed full-time this fall, two student suicides last year. And now a deadly shooting just two days earlier at a school a few hours away.”
Months earlier (July 6, 2021), the same paper published a report entitled, “Study: Cannabis use, thoughts of suicide linked.” The national study referred to in the article found that young adults who used marijuana were more likely “to think about and make plans to kill themselves.”
In the report, Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, stated that “Consumption of marijuana increases your risk of suicidal behaviors.”
In March of 2020, Jamie Lehane, president and CEO of Newport Mental Health in Middletown, and Sandra Oxx co-authored “Peace of Mind: When it comes to pot, remember the lessons opioids have taught us” (The Newport Daily News).
Most notable in their column piece was the affirmation by Dr. Bertha Madras with the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School: “Marijuana today is not the 1960s drug it was before. It’s 3-25 times higher in potency and can reach up to 80% THC concentrate.”
Dr. Madras was also quoted as saying that with higher THC levels, there is a “greater potential for psychosis, impaired brain function, and addiction.”
In very compelling and powerful language, the authors pointed out that, “…the more marijuana use is normalized, the greater the threat to U.S. public health and welfare.”
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (West Virginia) recently wrote an op-ed that was featured in The Newport Daily News on Dec. 27. In her editorial, she discussed the issue of drug addiction and the traumatic effect it has had nationwide.
Sen. Capito emphasized that we, as a society, must “stop drug use before it starts, especially among children” and advocated for the continued investments in drug prevention efforts and research, among other things.
Considering all of the information provided regarding suicide and mental health, and the fact that we live in a culture where mass shootings include kids with mental illness shooting other kids, why would we want to legalize a drug that has been associated with schizophrenia and psychosis? A drug that not only increases the risk of mental illness, including psychosis, but schizophrenia by sixfold?
As Sen. Capito pointed out, we need to invest in drug PREVENTION, not drug proliferation.
Most importantly, we need to focus on finding solutions to the mental health crises our children are facing. Legalizing marijuana would only add fuel to the fire.
Carol Formica is a former member of the Special Legislative Commission to Study the Effects of Legalizing Marijuana and is a substitute teacher in Newport County schools.
This article originally appeared on Newport Daily News: GUEST VIEW: Legalizing marijuana in RI only adds fuel to the fire
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