GCHD board hopes to prepare youth for legal marijuana

EPHRATA — The times they are a changin’.

Bob Dylan wrote it and sang it back in 1964 and of course the one constant between then and now is change.

With the legalization of marijuana in Washington state, Former First Lady Nancy Reagan’s “Just say No” advertising campaign during the 1980s is as irrelevant as ever. Legal marijuana is changing the landscape in Washington communities and impacting the state’s young people in ways far differently than the past.

The Grant County Health District board of directors will use a youth-oriented marijuana prevention grant to sponsor a series of three free one-day conferences in three different Central Washington communities.

The Youth Marijuana Prevention & Education Conferences kick off in Okanogan on June 21. Moses Lake will host the second on June 22 at the Columbia Basin Tech Skills Center. The series wraps up in Wenatchee on June 23.

The purpose of the day is to provide teachers, counselors, health care professionals, law enforcement and any other people that work with youth better information to pass along on how to live in a world where marijuana is legal.

“I think the more education kids have the better,” board member Mark Wanke, Ephrata said. “I’m really concerned about the welfare of our youth. Even though these laws have passed, what’s to prevent other factors to come into effect. You can still lose a job for testing positive. I know as far as a CDL license (Commercial Driver License), you better not be doing it.”

Washington Initiative 502 passed in November of 2012 and today’s children are many times going home to households where parents are smoking marijuana on a recreational basis.

“Teenagers tend to do what their parents do,” board member Dr. David Curnel, Moses Lake said. “So if the parents smoke cigarettes, the kids smoke cigarettes. If you have parents smoking marijuana in the home, I think those teenagers are going to mimic their parents. Marijuana is definitely a gateway drug. There is study after study to that effect, so it’s definitely a difficult question to address.”

Initiative 502 has nt opened the door to marijuana outlets in all Grant County communities. Moses Lake currently has three retail outlets — Green Seed, Funclebuds and Mary Jane — all recreational. The legal age to purchase retail marijuana is 21, same as alcohol.

However, Quincy does not allow the sale of marijuana. The Othello City Council just voted to draft an ordinance to ban production, processing and retail sales of marijuana in City of Othello.

“That’s the purpose of the conference because the old strategies we’ve used in the past don't necessarily work in a state where it’s legalized,” GCHD administrator Theresa Adkinson said. “One of the things we’re looking at is giving kids the refusal skills, but also how to talk with their own family about it. We’re going into this with the understanding of learning everything we can about what the landscape looks like so that our teachers, our counselors, our school district all those people that deal with teenagers have the information they need. You never know when you’re going to get the chance to talk to a kid about this. What do you do when you go to a family barbecue and they’re smoking pot? We’re trying to help them deal with it when they’re in that situation. It’s basically, how do I live in a world where marijuana is legal?”

The new and improved retail marijuana is not the same stuff the Woodstock Generation grew up with in the 1960s. The Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) levels are so much higher with the grade of marijuana available today that there are numerous health questions.

“We’ll also talk about brain development. These kids’ brains are still forming and the evidence is there that use of marijuana at a young age attacks the brain’s ability to learn and be effective in the workforce,” Adkinson said. “What we’re learning through our Needle Exchange Program is that if they use one substance they are more likely to use something stronger.”

Curnel agreed. “From a social standpoint, I don’t think legalizing it has changed the attitude people have for it,” he said. “The attitude most people have, including our legislators obviously, is that it’s a harmless drug, but it’s not. Marijuana is a fat and soluble chemical. It goes to the brain, which is largely fat and stays in the body for a prolonged period of time. There’s evidence that if you smoke a joint today, half of that is going to be in your body 10 days later.”

It’s an ever-changing world with an age-old concern and the Grant County Health District intends to arm Central Washington teenagers with as many facts as possible with its Youth Marijuana Prevention grant.

For more information on the conferences contact Heather Massart at hmassart@granthealth.org or (509) 766-7960, ext. 16.