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Saturday, January 25, 2014

Our Changing Culture: Marijuana Legalization


David Roach: Warnings about marijuana abound amid legalization push

President Obama's comment that marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol has drawn objection from a Southern Baptist seminary president and stands in stark contrast to the arguments of many evangelicals about the personal and societal cost of legalizing the drug. For some, Obama's comment also provides an opportunity for ministry to marijuana users....

R. Albert Mohler Jr. responded that "any parent who reduces the arguments [to such points] is a parent that better be ready for his children or her children to smoke marijuana or to do whatever he supposedly doesn't want them to do but can muster only an argument that it is a waste of time, a bad idea and not very healthy." Keep reading

Marijuana legalization: Well-funded advocates soften voters; governments eye tax dollars

Hundreds of marijuana smokers lined up outside new state-sanctioned "pot dispensaries" in Colorado Jan. 1, the first day citizens, as well as tourists, could legally buy the drug for recreational use.

More than 30 shops in the state, capitalizing on the new "green rush," netted nearly $1 million during the first day of sales, according to the deputy director of the National Cannabis Industry Association, Betty Aldworth.

Aldworth told CNN "adult use" of marijuana -- meaning use by those legally allowed to buy and possess one ounce of the drug -- will develop into a $208 million industry in the Rocky Mountain state alone. That figure does not include the $250 million in projected sales of "medical marijuana," which proponents claim eliminates nausea associated with chemotherapy, relieves pain and lessens the effects of diseases such as glaucoma and multiple sclerosis. Keep reading

Alexandra Kuykendall: Parenting in the Haze of Legalized Marijuana

I got out of my minivan, and I could smell it in the rec center parking lot. Minutes later, my 11-year-old could, too.

Our first discussion about the new Colorado law that legalizes marijuana began with her asking, "What's that smell?" It forced a conversation we needed to have anyway about marijuana, its effects on behavior, and the new laws that might make that smell more common. "You mean it might smell like this all the time?" The only response I could offer was, "I don't know."

I'd learned she'd already talked with her grandmother, my mom, about the people standing in lines outside storefronts for their first chance to buy recreational marijuana legally. In Denver these days, it seems everyone's talking about the Broncos or marijuana. Keep reading

Photo: United States Fish and Wildlife Service

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