New York Times Editorial: What Advocates of Legalizing Pot Don’t Want You to Know

At Freedom Institute, we do not take a stance on legal or political issues. We have our professional views and opinions about the physical, mental and emotional effects of substance abuse and our mission is to help individuals and families suffering from substance use disorders.

What we do see time and time again in our offices are parents who are concerned about their adolescents or young adults use of marijuana and frustrated with society’s new attitude towards marijuana – that it is not a drug or a gateway drug, that it is not addictive, that it is medicinal.

What we do believe and take a stance on at Freedom Institute is that substances and a developing brain do not go together.

As Alex Berenson, a former New York Times reporter and the author of the forthcoming “Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence” states in his recent New York Times editorial What Advocates of Pot Don’t Want You to Know, “Many older Americans remember marijuana as a relatively weak drug that they used casually in social settings like concerts. They’re not wrong. In the 1970s and 1980s, marijuana generally contained less than 5 percent THC. Today, the marijuana sold at legal dispensaries often contains 25 percent THC.”

“As Americans consider making marijuana a legal drug, it would be wise to remember the choices that fueled the devastating opioid epidemic. Decades ago, many of the same people pressing for marijuana legalization argued that the risks of opioid addiction could be easily managed. A half-million deaths later, we have learned how wrong they were.  Marijuana’s risks are different from opioids’, but they are no less real. Let’s remember that hard truth as we listen to promises that allowing the use of this drug will do no harm.”