EDITORIAL: A disturbing poll

Medical marijuana’s support grows

What a shocking poll. And it has nothing at all to do with The Donald, Dr. Carson, or any of the other presidential hopefuls crowding your television sets.

The political science types at the University of Arkansas have come out with their annual Arkansas Poll, or what they call The Arkansas Poll, that definite article being all the rage these days. Folks working on the poll interviewed 800 Arkies back in October, and found some interesting things. Some were expected: People in Arkansas like Asa!, the president not-so-much, and oppose same-sex marriage.

For the You're Kidding part, however, you had to see the numbers for medical marijuana.

Back in 2012, Arkansas voters turned down a ballot proposal to allow for the use of medical marijuana in the state. But only barely. The proposal failed with 49 percent of the vote for, 51 agin.

That made a lot of folks nervous. With a vote like that, the idea of medical marijuana wasn't killed in Arkansas, only just barely wounded. And its supporters vowed to be back. And they are. (They're trying to get it on the ballot again, as they promised.)

Now we find that The Arkansas Poll says 68 percent--sixty-eight percent--of respondents say, sure, why not medical marijuana?

Well, here's why not, for starters: It's not just a slippery slope, but a greased one. Colorado passed a medical marijuana law back in 2000. And only a few years later passed a law allowing for recreational use. Now it's smoke 'em if you got 'em in Colorado. Talk about your Rocky Mountain High. Laws can have gateways, too.

Nobody has explained how Aunt Jenny is going to keep Little Suzy out of her medicine cabinet, either. In 2013, dispatches out of Colorado said the 74 percent (that's even more than 68 percent) of teens being treated for substance abuse in Denver had admitted to using somebody else's medical marijuana at some point. A study said, in the best scientese: "Medical marijuana use among adolescent patients in substance abuse treatment is very common, implying substantial diversion from registered users."

Translation: The kids are getting into the stash.

Now 68 percent of Arkies say medical marijuana is fine? Are they reading the papers?

The poll made us a little light-headed, and it wasn't a contact high. We called the always helpful Dr. Janine Parry, the poll's director/poli-sci professor/big wheel at the University of Arkansas. She gave us good news and not so good news.

First, the good: She notes that poll results gather feelings of folks in an abstract way. When somebody tells a pollster that, sure, doobies aren't so bad, they might not exactly vote that way when it comes down to it on Election Day.

The not so good: She notes that a lot of states are legalizing medical marijuana, and Arkansas might just go along with the crowd. Call it peer pressure.

Here's hoping not. If everybody else jumped off a bridge ... .

Just say no. Or no thank you, this being a polite Southern state. And sometimes an all too Natural State.

Nobody wants sick folks to suffer even more than they do. Which is no doubt why outfits pushing medical marijuana--and we mean pushing--give themselves names like Arkansans for Compassionate Care. As if the rest of us were Arkansans for Cruel Care.

But note: Anybody in need of pain relief in the stuff that marijuana cigarettes provide can get that relief in a pill distributed by a legal, above-the-board pharmacist without the need for little, or large, Mary Jane farms sprouting all over the state. Lord save us from that. And our kids.

There's a reason so many doctors are against legalizing marijuana. (Including Dr. Sushrut Jangi of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, who had an opinion article in the Boston Globe, and was reprinted in this paper recently.) The stuff is dangerous. The stuff on the street today isn't your father's dope.

Let's make sure it isn't your son's either.

Editorial on 11/24/2015

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