NOT SO FAST, MR. SUTHERS

"I confidently predict that marijuana use by teenagers in Colorado
will increase again in 2011 and that medical-marijuana proponents and
the legislators who voted for dispensaries will deny any connection."

- - Attorney General John Suthers, when asked by The Denver Post for a
New Year's prediction.

Ouch! Come on, John, show some mercy and take your boot off our necks.

There, that's better.

OK, I'll admit it, the attorney general has a point. Medical
marijuana supporters (I'm one of them) are due some soul-searching
given the latest data from the University of Michigan's annual survey
that shows pot use rising among teens for the third year in a row.

Even the lead researcher on the study, Professor Lloyd Johnston,
thinks "there's a good chance that widespread discussion of the
medical marijuana issue, and more recent discussions about fully
legalizing the drug, may be conveying the notion that it's not as dangerous."

Nor can you blame Suthers for his cynical expectation of how some
medical marijuana proponents will react, especially those invested
professionally in the cause. In a recent article in The Post, for
example, Brian Vicente of the pot advocacy group Sensible Colorado
suggested that if anything, medical marijuana had made the drug less
glamorous to teens "because it's viewed as something that your mom or
elderly people use."

Please.

Still, medical marijuana enthusiasts who refuse to admit the policy
might have tradeoffs are hardly the only ones wearing blinders. The
more implacable opponents of dispensaries and decriminalization,
Suthers included, rarely acknowledge the social costs of the war on
pot or its toll on personal freedom and civil liberties - or even
that some dispensary patients actually are seeking pain relief as
opposed to a recreational high.

Sure it's reasonable for Suthers and Johnston to suspect that the
emergence of dispensaries and the debate about possible legalization
might be sending an unintended message to teens. And full
legalization, if it happens down the road, could well boost
marijuana's use - at least at first.

But how much pent-up demand is there, really?

After all, a drug's popularity is only marginally related to its
legal status. Most of us who never touch marijuana could get our
hands on it if we wanted to. We simply have no desire for it. Many
non-users detest even being in the vicinity of someone smoking
marijuana. I know I do.

Alcohol is legal and not hard for teens to get. Yet that same
Michigan study that noted a rise in marijuana use found that "alcohol
use continues its long-term decline among teens into 2010, reaching
historically low levels." For 12th-graders, alcohol consumption is
lower than at any time "since the study's inception in 1975."

(For adults, alcohol consumption seems to have peaked way back around
1830 - see W.J. Rorabaugh's book "The Alcoholic Republic" - at which
point public attitudes about heavy drinking began to shift.)

Colorado's new laws governing dispensaries, if properly enforced,
should end the sloppy free-for-all that tarred the industry during
its first 18 months and reduce the number of outlets. Meanwhile, if
one unintended side effect of dispensaries happens to be slightly
higher use in the wider population - might be, I should say, since
the Michigan study involved the entire country and most states don't
allow medical pot - there's absolutely nothing to say that this
consumption uptick must be permanent.