L<\/span>arry Wolk is the executive director of Colorado\u2019s Department of Public Health and Environment. This makes him the top government health official in the first state to allow over-the-counter sales of recreational marijuana \u2014 and, as such, a leading authority on what cannabis does (and doesn\u2019t) do to the body and to the body politic.<\/p>\n Wolk is also a skeptic. Reacting to several recently published studies (and one to be released soon) linking the availability of legal marijuana with a decrease in opiate overdoses and opiate-overdose related death, Wolk preached caution. It\u2019s too early to say cannabis will solve the opiate crisis,\u00a0he told the Denver Post<\/a>, and the initial findings that legal cannabis in Colorado reduced fatal overdoses in that state by 6.5 percent are just that: preliminary data.<\/p>\n But Wolk\u00a0can<\/em>\u00a0tell you what marijuana legalization does to a place, broadly. And in the years since Colorado voters legalized cannabis in November 2012 and states began on Jan. 1, 2014, Wolk has had to deal with \u2014 well, not much at all.<\/p>\n Colorado officials have seen no \u201csignificant issues as a result of legalization,\u201d\u00a0Wolk told a radio morning-show broadcast on tiny Prince Edward Island in Canada<\/a>, where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau\u2019s Liberal government is set to follow American states\u2019 leads and legalize marijuana for all adults 21 and over next summer.<\/p>\n This is true across the board. There have been no major changes in youth use. There have been no major changes in how much adults use. There have been no massive sick-outs, no lost productivity, no spike in truancy at schools. There has been no massive increased in stoned driving. There has been an increase in the number of pot-related calls to poison-control centers, but it\u2019s slight, and could be attributed solely to the fact that cannabis is legal, and callers are more forthcoming and honest about the fact they (or their kid) just ate weed.<\/p>\n \u201cThe short answer is we haven\u2019t seen much,\u201d said Wolk, according to the CBC.<\/p>\n About the only perceptible change was a tiny rise in the number of people seeking medical attention at hospitals after consuming marijuana \u2014 but even here, there\u2019s a major asterisk. Most of those people, Wolk told the CBC, were from out of town,\u00a0less-famous Maureen Dowd who failed to heed the warning labels on edibles and became too stoned for comfort<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to remember that Wolk is no friend to the cannabis industry.\u00a0In 2014, Wolk called from a blanket ban on all<\/a>\u00a0marijuana edibles, declaring them too similar to candy and therefore a temptation for youth. Wolk also believes that marijuana and alcohol should never mix\u2014unwelcome news at any place in Colorado where beer is sold, which is many, many places\u2014and that the most appropriate age to begin using cannabis is probably closer to 25 than it is 21.<\/p>\n Which is exactly why this is a significant moment. Wolk\u2019s frank, data-driven directness is an unwelcome development for legalization\u2019s sworn enemies, who are convinced that cannabis causes serious, direct harm to youth, young adults, parents, and the family dog \u2014 and have been on a quest ever since to find data to fit this assertion, no matter how scant or thinly sourced.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s one such example: Smart Approaches to Marijuana, the nonprofit founded and run by a former employee of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, which is constitutionally forbidden from endorsing cannabis legalization. By their reckoning, marijuana exacerbates the country\u2019s opiate crisis.<\/p>\n Pot and opioids don\u2019t mix.. and marijuana use predicts worse opioid use. https:\/\/t.co\/PPshbYraXH<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 SAM (@learnaboutsam) October 16, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Quite the feat, considering that legal marijuana is either not available or tightly restricted in the states suffering the most from overdose deaths.<\/p>\n Spending time sowing fear and doubt about marijuana legalization is one thing. Doing it in the absence of data \u2014 when there are far greater threats around \u2014 is both dangerous and disingenuous. But with public-health figures like Wolk calmly pointing out what\u2019s right in front of us, those voices are diminished and easier than ever to ignore.<\/p>\n TELL US, <\/strong>have you experienced cannabis in an adult-use state yet?<\/p>\n The post Colorado Chief Health Officer: Marijuana Legalization Hasn\u2019t Done Much<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Legal cannabis in Colorado hasn\u2019t caused many issues or changes. Larry Wolk is the executive director of Colorado\u2019s Department of Public Health and Environment. This makes him the top government health official in the first state to allow over-the-counter sales of recreational marijuana \u2014 and, as such, a leading authorityContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,21,80,2113,2173,81],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20657"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20657"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20658,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20657\/revisions\/20658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n
\nRead More: Colorado Chief Health Officer: Marijuana Legalization Hasn\u2019t Done Much<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"