BBC TV - This world - Americas Stoned Kids

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edgarshade

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Aired 24 Aug 2013, 9pm BBC2
In November last year the American state of Colorado voted to legalise the recreational use of cannabis. It is the most radical experiment in drugs policy for generations and the world will be looking to see what happens, particularly to drug use amongst teenagers. In this hour long documentary for This World, clinical psychologist and addiction expert Professor John Marsden heads to Denver, the state capital, to assess the likely impact of legalisation on a country already suffering an epidemic of teenage marijuana use.

At a local high school, John hears from A grade students who explain that getting stoned is now more socially acceptable than getting drunk. At an addiction clinic that treats children as young as 12, John hears how marijuana is already the number one reason for kids to enter residential programmes more than alcohol, cocaine, ecstasy and other drugs combined. With rates of teenage cannabis use in the USA the highest that they have been in years, it is widely acknowledged the war on drugs has failed. However the question is, will full legalisation manage to take the selling of the drug out of the hands of the street dealers and into the hands of the legitimate business people and be the answer to stopping America's kids from getting stoned?
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b039dsnc/This_World_Americas_Stoned_Kids/
 
Kind of disparaging "will someone puurleese think of the children!" tone to the whole programme, in line with the BBC's current conservative drug coverage policy. At one point John says, "I know the harm that drugs can do....". Immediately that tells me he is a drug-war tool. Cannabis is not all drugs and lumping it together with "drugs" is just a cheap way to put relatively safe drugs in the same category as really nasty ones. IMHO.
 
Yeah, they kept bringing up the point that this will make it easier to get and more acceptable for the younger population and "these kids are smart they'll find a way to get it". Bullshit its already easy to get in an unregulated market at least legalizing it will put some ID requirements and some shop and personal responsibility ie. they will get fined/lose the right to sell cannabis if they sell to minors.
 
What they aren't discussing is the amount of kids sentenced to rehab by the court system and how those statistics would paint a different picture than the one they are trying to.
 
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