Massachusetts Doctors, Clinicians and Scientists Issue a Powerful New Statement of Concern on Marijuana

A powerful new “Statement of Concern” was published recently by a cohort of Massachusetts doctors, clinicians, and scientists. They strongly reject their state’s treatment of marijuana as an “ordinary commodity” that requires little or no consideration of its impact on the health of the citizens of Massachusetts, and call for it instead to be “Regulate[d] and govern[ed]… using a Public Health Framework…[that] prioritizes population-level health over commercial market interests…”

They observe that while not all marijuana users will experience negative effects, “the risk is substantial enough to require policies which discourage use.”

Among the key points of the Statement are:

• that just like the previous “regulatory failure[s]” of the state regarding tobacco, opiods, and vaping, such regulatory failure is likely in the case of marijuana as well if the state does not prioritize public health

• Marijuana is a potentially addictive drug, and its potency is ever-increasing, thereby increasing the risks of harm

• “the tobacco industry has spent billions of dollars” to enter the vaping and marijuana markets, and they are likely to combine the two interests to produce high-THC vapes, which are of particular and growing risk to youth.

• “Marijuana use by adolescents can impair brain development…reduce academic success, impact long-term career growth, and even lower user IQ. (These two points are a particular focus of IBH through its One Choice teen drug use prevention initiative.)

• Massachusetts doctors and clinicians are seeing these effects first-hand in their own patients.

IBH encourages everyone who cares about public health to read this Statement of Concern, and to actively seek to implement its conclusions in their own states as well as at the federal level.

Click here to read the Statement of Concern via marijauna-policy.org

Click here to visit the Marijuana Policy Initiative’s web page about the Statement.

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