Nathan Hale High School health teacher Annemarie Michaels-Plumpe writes this letter to the editor about a party last Friday, sponsored and covered by The Stranger, celebrating the one-year anniversary of marijuana legalization. Held at Seattle Center, the party was 21 and over, and hidden from public view inside a closed canopy. But Michaels-Plumpe says adults having fun with pot in a somewhat public setting sent a dangerous message to children:
I am writing this letter in response to Ben Livingstonâs Stranger article entitled: Antidrug Activists Try to Shut Down Pot Party -Treatment Professionals Say Celebration at Space Needle Is Bad for Children.
There is evidence that favorable community opinion about a drug such as alcohol or marijuana correlates with not only increased use by teens but also an impression among them that the dangers are less than they might be. Allowing for marijuana use as long as the public cannot see its useâsuch as throwing a party to celebrate the legalization of a drug by using that drug in a large group, in a public place where families gatherâis definitely sending a clear message about our communityâs opinion on the use of marijuana.
Iâm a high school health teacher and I do not try to scare my kids from using drugs. I tell them what I know to be the truth based on studies and what I hear from professionals in the field of addiction and recovery. If the study had a small sample or wasnât repeated with the same results then I tell them that also.
The THC levels in the marijuana being sold today are physically addictive to 20 percent of teen users. Teens who are dabbingâburning and inhaling the hash oil which has even higher THC levelsâfor those whose brains are not used to THC have experienced hallucinations, paranoia, psychosis, and have lost consciousness after just one hit. This comes directly from an intake counselor at Children's Hospital who has gotten the information directly from teens being admitted.
Additionally from the juvenile justice system we are hearing that teens who dab are coming in with UA counts of 900 and more when an average count for a regular user is around 250. As for hard data there isn't any yet because it is so newâdoes that mean we just don't tell teens about some possible side effects since a new use of a drug hasn't been around long enough? To me it would be irresponsible and morally wrong to not share what the professionals are seeing in teens that regularly use marijuana and teens new to dabbing.
Sending a positive message to youth on using this drug is irresponsible. To shrug your shoulders about public pot use and say things like âOh well, this party is only for adults and wonât influence or effect kids at all and it isnât my job to keep kids off drugs anyway, that is the job of their parentsâ is saying that you donât care about the effects of this drug on the community overall so long as it benefits you and your friends.
When kids see adults using something and having fun while using it there is a message being received by them that this is a good thing to engage in. Kids who regularly use marijuana are twice as likely to do poorly in schoolâis it because of the marijuana or are they smoking the marijuana to avoid the fact that they are not being successful in school? We donât know but we do know that a-motivational syndrome exists and that teens are susceptible to it as well as adults.
Sure you can argue that adults with full knowledge of the pros and cons of smoking pot whether it is just once or more than once should be able to do so but why exactly should they be able to do so in public? Our teen smoking rates have dropped dramatically in this state partly because kids donât see it like they used to. People arenât smoking in restaurants, at work or in theatres, and the people they do see smoking cigarettes are usually standing outside bars looking really coldânot funâso kids arenât as tempted.
Did Fridayâs celebration lead a kid to use marijuana therefore leading them to a lifetime of addiction and legal problems? Highly unlikely. Could it add more âevidenceâ to that kidâs decision-making that pot must be okay for you if adults are using it so publicly? Yes, I think it could and as responsible adults the message needs to be loud and clear that making decisions about drug use is for an adult brain and that kids need to wait.
âJust say noâ didnât work in the '80s and it wonât work now, but sending a unanimous message from users and non users alike to kids of âwaitâ has a chance of working. This is not the message the pro-marijuana faction in Seattle is sending and the party on Friday night was an example of that.
Thanks you for your time and consideration.
Annemarie Michaels-Plumpe
Nathan Hale High School Health Teacher
Discuss.