EDUCATORS SEE RISE IN STUDENT DRUG USE, BLAME MEDICAL
MARIJUANA

In April, an aide brought a student to C.M. Russell High School
Principal Dick Kloppel's office.

It was 8:15 a.m. and the student smelled of marijuana. The aide
suspected that the student was high.

The girl told Kloppel she drove her boyfriend to school and that he
was smoking his medical marijuana in the car. He is a Montana
"green-card" holder, meaning he can legally possess and smoke
marijuana to alleviate pain.

Kloppel then inspected the student's car.

"You could smell the marijuana from outside the car. It was almost
blue in the car," he said.

Through the smoke, Kloppel spotted a baby seat in the back. The
principal believed that the couple's 4-month-old baby likely had been
riding in the car.

"Looking at her (the student), there was no way she wasn't high. But
she said she wasn't using it, and there was nothing in her
possession," Kloppel said.

With no admission of guilt, there was nothing the administration could
do but send her back to class.

This instance is not isolated. More Great Falls teenagers are smoking
marijuana than counselors and administrators have ever seen before.
Kloppel and Fred Anderson, principal at Great Falls High School, say
that is because of the growing use of medical marijuana in the community.

"I strongly believe it is directly attributable to the increased
availability of the drug through caregivers and cardholders," Kloppel
said.

Counselors say students have taken a more casual approach to marijuana
in the past year. They keep hearing students tell them it is medicinal
and helps calm them down and relieve stress.

With no way for officials to test students for marijuana besides
taking them to the hospital for a blood test, students -- with or
without a green card -- go unpunished for using the drug.

"Right now, we don't have a policy," Kloppel said in a recent
interview.

"This has become an epidemic," CMR counselor Earlene Ostberg said.
"Some of these kids were going to go to college and now are just going
to get a job."

In a February 2009 survey among the city's high-schoolers, 48 percent
reported that they have used marijuana, and 5 percent reported using
it 10 to 19 times in the last 30 days. The number of students who said
they experimented with marijuana was up nearly 10 percent from the
2007 Youth Risk Behavior Survey. The latest national statistics
conducted by the CDC show 38.1 percent of teens had used marijuana at
least once in their lifetime, according to the 2007 survey.

"But our data doesn't reflect how much it's increased since they
started opening up the marijuana stores," said Mikie Messman, Chemical
Awareness/Responsive Education program coordinator for the school district.

Kloppel and Anderson say there is no question that the use is higher
than last year.

"It's worse than the early '70s," Kloppel said.

What is different is that marijuana use this year seems to be across
all groups and cliques at the high schools.

"It really does not have boundaries -- even athletes," Anderson said.
"There used to be a group you could ID, but now it doesn't have
boundaries."

Authorities used to be able to pinpoint the distribution points, but
"now if you can get it anywhere, where do you go?"

There are no avenues of control, he added.

"There are a lot of kids that don't (use marijuana), but there are a
lot more kids that do that didn't use to," Kloppel said.

Tom Daubert, founder and director of Patients and Families United, a
Montana cannabis care-giving cooperative, said that in other states
with medical marijuana laws, recreational use among teens has actually
gone down.

"It's no fun anymore. Kids see it as grandma's cancer medicine,"
Daubert said.

In Montana, Daubert said the traveling medical marijuana clinics
organized by the Montana Caregivers Network have created a different
perception in the last seven months.

In October, the Obama administration told federal prosecutors not to
waste time arresting marijuana patients and suppliers who are
operating legally under state law. The traveling clinics followed.
They give people access to doctors who see marijuana as a safe
alternative to some traditional prescription medications. The Montana
Caregivers Network has signed up a large portion of the nearly 15,000
medical marijuana cardholders in Montana.

Efforts to either craft legislation solutions or a ballot initiative
to undo the 2004 decision legalizing medical marijuana were discussed
last week in Helena by people on both sides of the issue.

Jason Christ, executive director of the Montana Caregivers Network,
said the problem of illegal marijuana use among teenagers has been
there all along.

"Principals, they don't know," Christ said. "It's not that these
clinics are causing the problem."

He said that kids always have experimented with drugs, and school
officials should be more concerned with methamphetamine, abuse of
prescription medications and alcohol.

"No one has ever died from this plant -- ever," he said.

Christ wanted to be very clear, however, that medical marijuana should
be used only as a medicine.

"Jason Christ does not want to legalize marijuana," he
said.

Dr. John Stowers, an emergency room doctor in Great Falls, does not
suggest medical marijuana patients ever smoke marijuana. There are
other, more effective ways of ingesting the medicine, he said.

"There are risks. Marijuana is not a benign drug. Smoking anything
isn't healthy. It's kind of the best of a bad situation is the way I
see it," he said.

Stowers sees patients wanting medical marijuana about five times a
month in a separate office downtown. Patients are screened by phone
and by a nurse before he sees them, and even then, he said he turns
away 30 to 40 percent of the people he sees.

But there are many risks that have to be weighed when it comes to
young people having access to marijuana, he said.

"Clearly, the studies have shown that some people do have delay in
mental development," Stowers said. "Would I want my own child to smoke
marijuana? Absolutely not."

Stowers said he has seen three people in their teens or
20s.

"I wouldn't hesitate seeing a 12-year-old with his parents and talk to
his doctor, if they had a severe debilitating lifetime illness," he
said.

Stowers also said he is bothered by what the Great Falls principals
have seen in recent months.

"It was never intended to be in the hands of young, healthy kids," he
said.

The students tell Messman that smoking marijuana relieves their
stress. They are not learning to cope with their stress -- they are
covering it up, she said.

"The kids are using it as medication so they don't have to deal with
adolescence," Messman said.

"For me, this is the scariest thing I've ever seen," Ostberg added.
"Most of the ones that are failing are doing pot.

"When I ask, 'why,' a lot of kids are real defensive. They say, 'Mrs.
Ostberg, it's medicinal. I could get a green card,'" she said.

CMR senior Cameron Castaneda knows firsthand about using the drug. He
used to turn to marijuana any time a struggle came his way. If he
didn't get a good enough grade on a test, he'd get high. If he got in
an argument with his girlfriend, he'd get high.

"I couldn't cope with things," Castaneda said. "If you do it too much,
you pretty much -- you lose your life."

Castaneda said he lost his high school years because of
marijuana.

"It's like someone trying to swim with a 10-pound brick tied to your
leg," he said.

Castaneda dropped out of school last spring with a month and a half
left in the school year. Then he spent the summer in the juvenile
detention center after he stole a television out of an acquaintance's
house to get money to buy drugs.

Out on probation and back in school last fall, Castaneda lasted only
three weeks before he broke his probation and began to run from the
law.

His parents had sent him to live with his aunt and uncle in Great
Falls to get him away from the crowd he was hanging with in Las Vegas.
CMR school counselors and teachers saw Castaneda's potential in those
first nine months he lived here and stayed clean. But after visiting
his parents at Christmastime his junior year, he went right back to
that lifestyle. When he returned to Great Falls for school, he quickly
hooked into the party crowd here.

Castaneda's aunt and uncle fought hard for him, but eventually kicked
him out of the house. After breaking probation last fall, he had no
place to stay, hardly ate and had to borrow clothes from his friends.

In November, law enforcement caught up with him.

"At 17 years old, I spent two months on the hill in jail. I missed
Thanksgiving, Christmas and my 18th birthday," he said.

But one day in January, Castaneda was given a second chance. He
entered the drug treatment court program, in which he has to check in
every day before 10 a.m. Three times a week he has a drug test, and
every Tuesday he speaks to District Judge Thomas McKittrick about how
his week went. He also has to attend at least three support group
meetings a week.

"I've been sober 6 1/2 months -- and that's completely sober,"
Castaneda said. "Everything is so much better now that I have engaged
myself as a member of society."

Castaneda will graduate today from CMR, even though he lost two full
semesters of credit. He was a full semester ahead before he dropped
out the first time; this semester he took eight classes to meet
graduation requirements.

However, not everything can be undone.

Since Castaneda was a small boy, he has dreamed of becoming a special
agent for the FBI.

"Now that I have a felony, there is no way I can do that," he
said.

Castaneda will start at Montana State University-Great Falls College
of Technology this fall where he intends to major in English. He'd
like to become a novelist.

His fight to stay clean is a daily decision, he said. He has learned
other ways to cope when he argues with his girlfriend or something
doesn't go his way.

"Now when something like this happens, I'm a lot more willing to work
on it," he said. "Since I know I honestly do love the girl, I know I
want to work on it."

Montana's medical marijuana law states that it is not appropriate for
the workplace, but there is no mention of school.

Kloppel worries about the implications: What if the student with a
green card smokes marijuana at lunch and shop class is next? What if
the student will be using a saw?

What about driver's education, he wonders.

For those growing numbers of students smoking illegally, the same
concerns hold true, since it is hard to prove a student is under the
influence of the drug.

Even when the administration can add consequences for those students
smoking marijuana, it is of little concern to the students involved.

"All the detention that worked with people that are pretty rational
tends not to work with marijuana," Anderson said.

It's a vicious cycle. The kids start smoking and lose interest in
being in school. If they are not in school, counselors and teachers
cannot establish relationships with them.

"We know that we have to keep them in school to keep them engaged,"
Messman said.

"The heavy users and the regular users do not perform in school,"
Kloppel said. "School becomes less and less important to them."

One student who used to get B's and C's in school now is getting low
D's and F's. The student told Kloppel he is having trouble remembering
what he read after he reads it.

"He's still planning to go to college, but he has to get through high
school first," Kloppel said.

Compounding the problem is that parents are in denial, according to
school officials.

"If you have a violation that doesn't involve alcohol, there is a much
higher rate of denial," Anderson said. "Parents do not want to believe
it."

He said one situation stands out in his mind. A family of a student
with a serious marijuana problem denied those problems and refused to
get their child's blood tested. At a later date, the student was found
on the third floor of the school passed out during an athletic event.
He was rushed to the emergency room, where he was in serious condition.

"That is what it took," Anderson said. "That was an
eye-opener."

Ostberg said that many parents are not aware of what to look for if
their child is smoking marijuana. Many parents also will not allow a
blood test because they don't want to cause problems with their
relationship with the teen.

A CMR school newspaper reporter with the Stampede did a story this
spring on medical marijuana. She found an underclassman who was
willing to talk about how medical marijuana was helping her ailments
and how she got her green card.

The story turned out to be a total fabrication. The student didn't
have a green card or the medical condition she said she did.

Kloppel said the girl lied "to be cool."

It's the cool thing to do in high school now -- the story might get her
more friends, Kloppel said.

Alan Stelling, student body president at Great Falls High, said he
hasn't noticed marijuana use being more of a problem.

"Just around the school, I can't really tell, but I can see how the
attitudes are changing," he said.

His freshman year, students who were using marijuana were outcasts,
but now it's much more accepted, he said.

Ostberg is hearing that, too.

"I asked a group of students how difficult it was to get pot and how
many cardholders they knew of. They then added that when the
cardholders get their pot, they would invite people over and party for
several days," she said.

"The use of marijuana in Great Falls is crazy," CMR senior Jessica
Kohlhepp said.

She smells it before school, at lunch and even in the
classrooms.

"I see it all the time. I smell it all the time," she
said.

Kohlhepp stopped smoking marijuana her sophomore year after she ended
up in the emergency room. She had smoked a joint that was laced with
either meth or angel dust. While it didn't cost Kohlhepp her life, the
incident did cost her the trust and respect of her family and friends.

"I'm a well-put-together person, so my parents didn't even suspect,"
she said.

Now she has her life back on track. She graduates today and will move
to Billings to start cosmetology school next month.

"If I could talk to a kid before they tried it, I would say don't try
it. It will mess up your life. You can't trust your dealers -- even if
they are your friends," she said.

Messman, who has served as a school representative for the Juvenile
Drug Court program since its inception in January 2006, said the
statistics show kids are choosing marijuana over alcohol and other
drugs.

"From that (starting) date until May 1, 2010, we've had 53 kids
participate in Juvenile Drug Court. Of those 53, 51 named marijuana as
their drug of choice," Messman said. "These are kids who have
committed crimes and drugs or alcohol have been a major contributor to
their criminal behavior."

Kloppel and Anderson said kids believe that using marijuana while
driving will not result in a DUI, like it would if they were drinking
alcohol.

One of the scariest things Messman is noticing is that kids are trying
marijuana even before they are in high school.

"These kids are starting very, very young -- "12, 13 years old,"
Messman said.

Make that 4 months old, Kloppel pointed out, if you consider the baby
in the back of the student's car he searched.

Additional Facts

Parents: Know warning signs of drug abuse

Q: How can I tell if my child has been using marijuana?

A: There are some signs you might be able to see. If someone is high
on marijuana, he or she might:

- - Seem dizzy and have trouble walking;

- - Seem silly and giggly for no reason;

- - Save very red, bloodshot eyes; and

- - Have a hard time remembering things that just happened.

When the early effects fade, the user can become very
sleepy.

Parents should be aware of changes in their child's behavior, although
this may be difficult with teens. Parents should look for withdrawal,
depression, fatigue, carelessness with grooming, hostility and
deteriorating relationships with family members and friends.

In addition, changes in academic performance, increased absenteeism or
truancy, lost interest in sports or other favorite activities, and
changes in eating or sleeping habits could be related to drug use.
However, these signs may also indicate problems other than using drugs.

In addition, parents should be aware of:

- - Signs of drugs and drug paraphernalia, including pipes and rolling
papers;

- - Odor on clothes and in the bedroom;

- - Use of incense and other deodorizers;

- - Use of eye drops; and

- - Clothing, posters, jewelry, etc., promoting drug
use.

Source: The National Institute on Drug Abuse