WE'RE BUSY FIGHTING THE OTHER WARS

Currently on the national level we are focusing on mobilizing and
deploying our military forces; pondering how these actions will affect
our economy; and guessing which way the interest will move tomorrow.
Don't ever think for a moment that we are only about to go to war, WE
ARE ALREADY IN A WAR and have been for a long time.

Planning and preparations for sending troops overseas can be seen
everywhere. From the president to the mayor, everyone is trying to
make sure we are ready. And remembering some of our past conflicts,
invasions and occupations that didn't seem to accomplish very much in
relation to the costs in American lives, no one wants to be unprepared
and no one wants to get into a fight that we are sure to lose.

From time to time people refer to our country's struggles with drug
addiction as "The War on Drugs." Parents even refer to raising their
children as a war or, what the social workers and counselors refer to
as the continuing "Battle for Independence." My concern is that with
the pressures to legalize or deregulate more and more harmful or
addictive substances, we are placing our nation at risk in a most
dangerous way - with our kids.

Marijuana is a drug that many believe is just a phase of growing up
and that most kids will experiment with it and move on. The sad thing
is, that, as we speak, that is exactly what many of our young people
are doing. They have experimented with marijuana and moved on to
other, more addictive drugs.

Today more than 12 million people in our country use marijuana and 62
percent (more than 5.5 million) are dependent on its use. An alarming
fact is that our kids form the largest group of victims in that they
are first introduced to marijuana between the ages of 12 and 17 and
more are currently in treatment for marijuana dependency than for
alcohol or for all other illegal drugs combined.

It has long been known that marijuana affects alertness,
concentration, perception, coordination and reaction time. Think about
how many cars and trucks you meet on the highway in a day's time. How
safe would you feel if you knew that a study reported in the New
England Journal of Medicine stated that 45 precent of reckless drivers
who were not drinking tested positive for marijuana?

Many successful and professional adults will admit that they did some
crazy things in college, but they also say that was just a phase in
their life. Some will even privately admit that they experimented with
marijuana and it wasn't that big of a deal. What they may not realize
is that the marijuana that is on the streets today is not the same
marijuana that they remember. Some marijuana today is 13 times more
addictive than what was available in the 1970s. Since 1994,
marijuana-related emergency room visits have risen 174 percent and now
surpasses heroin admissions. The fact is that people who have used
marijuana are eight times more likely to use cocaine and 15 times more
likely to use heroin.

The facts presented in this article were obtained from various
documents from the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the
National Sheriff's Association. If you wish to obtain more information
on the dangers of marijuana you may refer to www.whitehousedr
ugpolicy.com or nsamail@sheriffs.org.

Oh yes, if you are reading this early enough, come on down and join us
in the Diabetes Walk starting in the downtown park at 10 a.m. and help
us fight yet another battle