By Caroline Jordan When Coloradans voted to legalize recreational cannabis in 2012 with Amendment 64, I was 14 years old. As a freshman in high school, I was among the first generation of teens to experience the reality of legal weed. It put Colorado on the map as the place where Americans cam e to get high. I was also among the first generation to experience what happens when eagerness for profit outweighs measured conversations about public health and safety. An explosion of new THC products, all marketed sleekly as not only safe and medicinal but trendy to consume, became normalized all at once. Teens couldn’t help but internalize that marketing and its claims, and believe it, only for some to find themselves in the hospital or dealing with long-lasting consequences of a “safe drug.” If the president reschedules marijuana from a Schedule I to a Schedule III drug — categorizing it as significantly less dangerous — the same damaging consequences and hard lessons learned over the past 14 years in Colorado might play out again on a national scale. The legal status of marijuana has always been a tricky and nuanced subject, but one thing is clear: public health impacts need to be at the forefront of the conversation, especially regarding youth. When I was still in high school, after marijuana had just been legalized, so many of the health and safety measures Colorado has today weren’t in place. Standardized THC symbols, warning labels, and requirements for child resistant, serving-size packaging were implemented over many years. My generation, and those young people who have come after, have paid the health costs for adults who opened the floodgates of commercialization before considering the risks to teens. Marijuana sits in a sample container at Emerald Fields, Manitou Springs’ second and final recreational marijuana shop, which opened on Manitou Avenue Wednesday, April 1, 2015.Michael Ciaglo, The Gazette Without clear labelling or clear serving sizes, it was common to hear about friends at parties consuming too much, thinking weed was safer than alcohol. While some “designated drivers” would diligently abstain from drinking, they would happily smoke a joint. Drugged driving is, however, dangerous — THC doubles the risk of a crash. Substantial medical and scientific research has indicated that cannabis and its major psychoactive component THC can result in major mental health effects, including psychotic symptoms or disorders like schizophrenia, and addiction (with associated withdrawal symptoms). These effects can be compounded in youth, who may be permanently harmed or find it harder to stop if they begin at a young age. Even if cannabis is illegal under the age of 21 (but is available with a medical marijuana card without a parent signoff at 18), there’s always going to be youth experimentation or potential for accidental ingestions (particularly risky with young children who are attracted to candy-like edibles). Wider availability increases these risks. Adults need to recognize that teens will always have some degree of irresponsibility, and that children will always play around and put “candy” in their mouths. The onus is on adults to consider these scenarios when crafting safe and reasonable drug policies that account for potential harms before commercialization. In Colorado, the allure of cannabis profits and the push for legalization resulted in these protections coming as an afterthought, after damage had been done. While Colorado has made significant strides in youth protections over the years, the rest of the country, especially states that have not considered marijuana legalization, risks being caught unprepared for the effects of marijuana being rescheduled as a less dangerous, more available drug. A federal Schedule III classification indicates a much higher level of safety and confidence in concrete medical use-cases than the vast majority of current research supports. None of the gold-standard science has indicated that marijuana is concretely effective for treating insomnia or acute pain, common reasons cited for medical usage. But more permissive legal status can easily lead young people nationwide to make the same misassumption many of my peers did; just because something is marketed as “medical” doesn’t mean it’s harmless. They might face the same challenge of clawing to get their lives back on track later. Regulatory and safety frameworks must be in place before any action is taken to increase availability. In Colorado, our youth have been the lab rats for a policy experiment that considered human costs a reasonable tradeoff for potential profits. Now, we know better. If our own history as a state on this topic shows us one thing, it’s that the nation as a whole is unprepared for what happens if cannabis becomes widespread. Potential profits of marijuana rescheduling will be astronomical, but the cost of being hasty could be incalculable harm. Caroline Jordan is the director of strategic and digital communications for One Chance to Grow Up, a Colorado-based nonprofit dedicated to protecting kids from today’s marijuana. ...read more read less