Last week, the Breckenridge ski area shut down for the season. We marked the occasion with an après ski party infused with a sense of finality, since the lifts won’t begin turning again for seven months.
While I stood in line for a slice of the roast pig, three young men and one woman passed a bowl among themselves. They were smoking marijuana. In a town where marijuana dispensaries outnumber gas stations, this wasn’t a shock. But the fact that they were so open about it (we, little kids included, couldn’t escape the second-hand smoke) warrants a discussion.
Let’s assume that these three smokers were medical marijuana cardholders and represented the averages taken from statistics reported by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE). And let’s ignore the fact that they were breaking existing laws by smoking in a public place.
This would make our smokers around the age of 40, from Denver or Boulder, and suffering from chronic pain, again according to the averages. Now, I’m not a doctor, but they were laughing, drinking and having a good time. Also, they appeared to have been snowboarding all day, which cast doubt as to whether they were suffering from chronic pain, as we usually define it.
Last week, the chief federal prosecutor in Colorado warned lawmakers against passing laws that appear to authorize the medical marijuana business, which is still illegal under federal law. While the medical marijuana debate certainly has merit, federal pressure should not ease until the argument closer represents reality.
I work at the high school in Summit County, and even the most rebellious of students believe will admit that for the most part, the whole medical marijuana industry is merely a device to decriminalize the drug. A friend of mine concedes this, despite possessing both a card and a legal grow operation in Colorado.
The downside to the ruse is that we’ve been denied the opportunity to have an honest conversation about marijuana use, one that particularly addresses use by children under the age of 18 and the message we are sending them.
“Patients” renew their medical marijuana cards annually by going to the doctor again and again to profess and be diagnosed with a “debilitating medical condition.” The doctor then “recommends” rather than prescribes marijuana as treatment. Would it be wise to consider another option when, after a few years of using marijuana to treat severe pain, no relief has been found?
According to the CDPHE, 123,890 cards have been issued as of March 31. The site also reports that 94 percent, or more than 116,000 of these cardholders, report severe pain as the condition causing them to need the medical marijuana card. Typically, chronic pain is associated with people 20 to 30 years older than the average cardholder. Are our young people really having a pain epidemic in this state?
I knew a cancer patient who smoked marijuana all the way through her treatment. She also smoked all the way through her 20s, so it’s hard to tell if it did any good or harm. Marijuana is prescribed to treat nausea in patients receiving chemotherapy, but she was prescribed other anti-nausea medication that she took orally or with the infusion. She smoked on top of these other medications and chose not to tell her doctor — perhaps because we all remember when marijuana use was seriously prosecuted and she hadn’t shaken that mindset.
Not long ago, I suffered complications related to surgery that I had on my foot. The pain was a 10 on my scale. The doctor prescribed a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory at first. However, because he had not first had me try a drug like ibuprofen, which carries less risk, the insurance company refused to pay. I took the ibuprofen and the injury eventually healed.
Obviously, drugs other than marijuana exist that can effectively treat debilitating conditions like severe pain without short-term memory loss (“What was I just talking about?”) or mild hallucinations (not the attacking bats or melting walls kind but the “it’s all good” feeling, when everything is clearly not).
If medical marijuana cardholders are in fact using the medical community to find a back door to total legalization, then harm is being done, serious research being thwarted. If you want to smoke pot because you think it is your recreational right, you enjoy the effects, it enhances your performance or concentration in some way or you think it is less harmful than alcohol, then that’s a different argument altogether and one worth discussing openly.
Jeff McAbee of Breckenridge is a campus supervisor at Summit High School, teaches skiing at Vail and writes for the Summit Daily News.
