We buried my brother earlier this year on his 56th birthday, roughly 41 years after I watched him take his first drink.
I don’t recall seeing my brother smoke pot on his way to chronic alcoholism, heroin addiction and a compulsion for painkillers that once led him to steal a prescription pad from our family doctor.
Though he probably smoked some dope, addiction helped kill my brother, not any single kind of drug. So when I got upset about Denver Councilman Doug Linkhart’s support for an initiative to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana, I wondered at my outrage.
And my hypocrisy.
I’ve probably smoked as much pot as Linkhart, a former state legislator who admitted getting high occasionally as a young man. I toked up a few times while drugs destroyed my brother. Most of my friends smoked dope, too. A few still do. Like Linkhart, most of us quit when our children were born. Still, Linkhart’s position bothered me. After a lot of thought, I think I know why.
It has to do with kids and contributing to our own demise. The addicts I’ve known could find ways to destroy themselves without pot. Junkies satisfy cravings, no matter what the laws say.
But rather than making the case for Amendment 44, it’s the very reason I’ll vote against it.
The amendment makes it legal for adults 21 and over to possess up to an ounce of pot. Linkhart doesn’t see how that relates to his three kids or to drug abuse. He says he voted for the recent Denver initiative to legalize adult pot possession. Now, he will “probably” vote for a statewide initiative. “I’ve never seen proof that possession of a small amount of marijuana by an adult is a safety issue,” said Linkhart, who chairs the Denver City Council’s safety committee.
As for kids, “marijuana is readily available now,” Linkhart said. “The law isn’t much of a deterrent. Parents are.”
“As a parent,” countered Bob Dorshimer, director of Colorado’s Council on Substance Abuse and Mental Health, Amendment 44 “scares the hell out of me.”
Like Linkhart, Dorshimer is raising three kids. Unlike Linkhart, Dorshimer believes legalizing pot for adults will make child-rearing much more difficult.
“In 20 years as a professional, marijuana is a gateway drug to harder drugs,” Dorshimer said. “I worked with a 17-year-old who crashed his car and killed his friend while high on marijuana. If my kids are sitting on the RTD next to people with pot, chances of them using it are better.
“My 15-year-old son has told me he’s already being pushed to drink by peer pressure. It’s hard to make the right choices.”
Amendment 44 will make it harder.
Existing marijuana laws may not keep junkies from doing drugs. They do keep some young people from experimenting.
Real life is not “Reefer Madness,” the movie where a joint inevitably led to drug-addicted despair.
“Why do you want to mess with my mellow?” one of my friends joked.
He’s probably right that potheads don’t pose the risk that, say, drunks do.
But this is not just about tolerance for recreational drug use by adults. It’s also about greasing the skids to illegal behavior and possible substance abuse by another generation.
“We already have a binge-drinking problem,” Dorshimer said of today’s children. Legal pot for adults will only add to the headaches of rehab counselors and parents because it will lead to easier drug access for kids.
“It’ll be like bumming cigarettes,” Dorshimer predicted.
Even if it’s not, legal dope means more adults smoking publicly. That means more children exposed to pot.
Linkhart says this only puts marijuana on a par with alcohol, tobacco and guns – vices the councilman rightfully argues are a lot more lethal than dope.
That’s where the councilman’s reasoning collapses. It’s where all supporters of Amendment 44 hit a brick wall of logic.
They think adding another potential poison to an already lethal mix can’t make the potion more toxic.
Anyone who’s lived around addiction knows how wrong they are.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at 303-954-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
