By Jessie Gill
EDITOR’S NOTE: On Dec. 4, NJ Cannabis Insider hosts a networking event in Red Bank, featuring a key lawmaker and business leaders in the medical marijuana and legal cannabis industries. Tickets are limited.
When I first became a medical cannabis patient five years ago, I agonized about whether I should tell my two children. Ultimately, I decided I wanted my kids to hear the truth from me because they were only getting myths and fallacies from others, including from their school.
Parents who are patients, like myself, face unique challenges that make it essential to teach our children the truth about cannabis. In New Jersey, we have more than 58,000 patients enrolled in the medical marijuana program, which recently expanded after the Jake Honig Compassionate Use Medical Cannabis Act was signed into law earlier this year.
What most children learn about cannabis
Today in New Jersey, most middle-school children are enrolled in a drug-education program, either DARE or a program like DARE. But did you know a 1992 study conducted at Indiana University showed graduates of DARE had higher rates of hallucinogen drug use than non-graduates? And a 10-year follow-up investigation by the American Psychological Association determined, “in no case did the DARE group have a more successful outcome than the comparison group.”
Yet, our children continue to receive Prohibitionist-era education in school.
DARE and similar youth-focused drug-education programs have revamped since the 1990s. Many might recall officers opening a suitcase filled with illicit drugs and encouraging sixth-graders to view the substances up close and to ask questions. The practice was discontinued after it was accused of inciting too much drug curiosity. DARE now takes a different approach, focusing more on topics like responsible decision-making and bullying.
But unfortunately, DARE continues to maintain a Prohibition-style attitude regarding cannabis, stating outright they do not support medical marijuana use or legalization.
DARE’s position paper states, “Marijuana may contain medical components like opium does. But we don’t smoke opium to get the effects of Morphine. Similarly, we don’t need to smoke marijuana to get its potential benefit.” They go on to instruct students to rely on synthetics, specifically marinol which has shown to be ineffective.
This means our schools are still teaching potentially harmful myths to our children.
Drug education programs are not the only issue. Even ordinary school health education programs are teaching outdated prohibitionist nonsense. This nonsense often comes from grossly obsolete textbooks and lesson plans.
For example, my son’s fourth-grade health book contained a long list of falsehoods. It claimed marijuana is harmful to the nervous system, when in fact, it’s used to help address many nervous system disorders. It also claimed marijuana damages the heart and lungs and that people who use marijuana can’t learn.
When my son noted on his test, “No one ever died from marijuana,” the teacher wrote in red, “We didn’t find facts about this” and took off a point. She was a really fantastic teacher; she just hadn’t been given new guidance on the topic.
Despite the growth of New Jersey’s medical marijuana program, we have not educated our teachers, counselors, or school nurses about the legal, social and medical developments surrounding cannabis. The Murphy administration clearly is leading the charge to legalize and normalize cannabis in the state. It should also have a plan to help educators and law enforcement update how cannabis is taught in our communities.
Is cannabis as dangerous as heroin? Schools say Yes.
Because cannabis remains a Schedule 1 substance under federal law, drug-education programs often lump cannabis into a category with significantly more dangerous substances, including opiates. This outdated classification is essentially telling children that marijuana is equally dangerous to heroin.
Why not educate about the actual facts similar to how we educate about the use of alcohol?
The problem is, if no one tells them differently, kids generalize. For example, when my daughter learned the truth about Santa Claus, she said, “Well then, that means the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy aren’t real either.”
Adolescents do the same, and these loose associations are dangerous when it comes to drug-education. They think, “Well you told me cannabis was dangerous and I can see that it’s not, therefore maybe those opiates aren’t so dangerous either.” Inaccurate associations like these have deadly consequences.
Prohibitionist-style education = bullying & alienation
On top of exposing children to the mortal danger of conflating cannabis with opiates, Prohibition-style drug education is alienating parents from their children. It’s difficult to hear one thing from a parent, and then hear completely contradicting information at school, where industry-members and cannabis patients are likened to criminals.
With the medical marijuana program expanding we’re also seeing an increase in pediatric cases. It’s heart-breaking that delicate children, who are already suffering from serious health issues, are subjected to discrimination and sanctioned harassment. Classmates are being indoctrinated and trained to discriminate against others if they happen to be a cannabis patient.
My son’s health book directly taught his class that people like me “could accidentally get hurt or hurt others” because I use cannabis. It also mislabeled me and others who smoke cannabis as “drug abusers.”
This belligerent hullabaloo could easily incite fear and trigger isolation for a young cannabis patient in the fourth-grade classroom. Additionally, it’s certainly unfair for the children of cannabis patients to hear their family cruelly mislabeled.
For parents, it’s more important than ever to teach children about marijuana. We must make sure our kids know the stark differences between cannabis and opiates. We must educate about the medical uses of the plant. If you’re a patient like me or has a family member who is, we must prepare our children for the stigma they will face. And we must guide them regarding how to approach adult use responsibly, because they will see federal legalization in their lifetimes.
It’s time to teach the truth about cannabis. If parents don’t, who will?
Jessie Gill is Marijuana Mommy. A Colonia-based registered nurse, Gill founded the online patient resource marijuanamommy.com in 2014. Her advocacy and drive to educate the public about cannabis stems from personal experience as a patient. A version of this column first appeared in NJ Cannabis Insider.
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