VOTERS ASKED TO LEGALIZE MARIJUANA

Voters throughout Alaska will be asked to decriminalize marijuana Nov.
2, but Kenai Peninsula alcohol and drug abuse treatment professionals
aren't backing the measure.

Ballot Measure 2 -- an initiative to legalize marijuana -- seeks to
remove civil and criminal penalties for people 21 years and older who
grow, use, sell or give away marijuana.

If approved, the bill also would allow the state to regulate marijuana
as it does alcohol and tobacco, and would allow for laws limiting
marijuana use in public and to protect public safety.

"Unfortunately, the message we send out to our youth is that marijuana
is a soft drug," said Henry Novak, director of Cook Inlet Council on
Alcohol and Drug Abuse.

"Casting it as a harmless drug sends a bad message to young people,"
he said. "It's not. It has harmful effects on the body. Much like
tobacco, marijuana causes cancer and heart trouble. And the method of
inhaling very deep and holding it in, does damage to the lungs."

A Kenai Peninsula proponent of legalizing marijuana, Georgia Mario,
who resides near Nikolaevsk, said, "To my knowledge, nobody ever died
from smoking marijuana."

A part-time nursing assistant student at the Kachemak Bay Campus of
Kenai Peninsula College, Mario said she first became interested in
legalizing marijuana when it was a ballot initiative in 2000, and she
advocates "compassionate medical use" of marijuana as well as its
recreational use.

"Hopefully, patients will have easier access to marijuana," she said.

Mario also said she would rather see the government spend money on the
prosecution of more violent crime than on prosecuting marijuana users.

"My interest is that police and resources can be better spent on
crimes against women," she said.

When asked why people use marijuana, Matthew Dammeyer, director of
behavioral health for Central Peninsula General Hospital, said, "The
actual perception among the public is it does not have the negative
side effects of other things."

Unlike alcohol use, marijuana does not bring on such after effects as
vomiting, seizures, tremors and blackouts, he said.

"There is a general understanding that it is not addicting," Dammeyer
said.

Serenity House, the central Kenai Peninsula alcohol and drug abuse
treatment center, sees a large number of marijuana users among those
seeking treatment, said Dammeyer, who oversees the facility's programs.

"Over half of our population (are marijuana users)," he said. "Among
adolescents, it's even higher."

"When people have poly-addictions, (marijuana is) often the last
addiction to go," Dammeyer said. "For some reason, heavy marijuana
users think it is not addictive."

According to Novak, heavy users of marijuana don't realize their
dependence on the drug until they try to quit.

"If they're hot for marijuana, we tell them to get clean. Only then do
they find out how tough it is to get off marijuana," Novak said.
"We've had people lose jobs they really wanted just because they can't
stop marijuana use."

Proponents of the ballot measure, known as "Yes on 2," state in the
election booklet prepared for voters that "... marijuana use itself
causes very few problems for individual users or for society."

"We would save state funds by not arresting peaceful, otherwise
law-abiding citizens who exercise their constitutionally protected
right to use marijuana," the proponent's statement says.

Novak said he believes young people who use marijuana in school do
poorly because of the effects of the drug THC, which is contained in
marijuana.

"Basically THC coats the receptor cells in the brain and impairs
memory," Novak said.

"Synapses are not clicking as they should, and the kids are unable to
remember and keep a train of thought," he said.

In a training video used at CICADA, titled, "Marijuana in the new
millennium," Dr. David Ohlms states marijuana in use in the mid-1960s
contained 1 to 5 percent THC.

Marijuana today averages 10 percent and as high as 17 to 18 percent
THC, Ohlms states.

Unlike alcohol, which dissolves in water, THC dissolves in fat, and
brain cells are 99.99 percent fat, according to Ohlms.

"THC thickens the wall of brain cells 400 times," he states.

To illustrate the point, Ohlms asked that people imagine the brain
cell wall being as thick as a sheet of paper. THC makes the cell wall
as thick as 400 sheets, he said.

Because chemical reactions in the brain must move from one cell to
another, the movement is impaired by the thickening, causing impaired
short-term memory, amotivational syndrome, increased appetite, altered
time perception and panic or a paranoid state, according to Ohlms.

Alaskans have voted on the marijuana issue before.

In 1990, they voted to re-criminalize marijuana possession after a
state Supreme Court decision said adults could possess pot for
personal possession in the home.

In 1998, voters allowed medical use of marijuana and in 2000, voters
rejected a ballot initiative asking for a return to unregulated
marijuana use.

If approved Nov. 2, Ballot Measure 2 would make Alaska the first state
to decriminalize marijuana entirely.