SandBoxBlogs: Glenwood Springs Post Independent/Your Letters "Make marijuana a true prescription drug"

Out of the mouths of the kids:

Kayla Kline:
"On my way to Glenwood Springs High School, I pass two dispensaries. I see two ads for medical cannabis while reading the local paper in the morning. I pass one dispensary before I cross the Grand Avenue bridge, and another just down the road.

In the paper I can always count on finding an article or an ad about medical marijuana. “Valley teen: Marijuana is ‘widely available.'” That article sure grabbed my attention. The article talked about a student in Carbondale and his dance with the medical marijuana epidemic. When asked where he would get his supply, he stated, “[My provider] would go down to the dispensary once or twice a week and get his marijuana, then he'd give it to me.”

In the local news briefs on March 8, another headline nabbed my attention: “Teen arrested for Carbondale dispensary break-in.” If you ask me, these dispensaries are nothing but trouble.

A group of us students at GSHS have been studying public policy. We are not out to say that marijuana should be legal or illegal. That's a lost argument.

We are looking into ways that medical marijuana could be better distributed. The main thing we have found when we asked our peers, “Do you think, upon seeing medical marijuana dispensaries, that marijuana is becoming socially acceptable?” is that 80 percent of the time, the answer was yes.

We have come up with a policy idea in which medical marijuana would be distributed through a pharmacy, like every other prescription medication. It would be given in a regulated dose with the information on usage as well as the patient's name on the prescription bottle. It would be handled by licensed pharmacists, and could only be obtained by prescription from a licensed doctor local to the patient's area of residence.

There would be less chance of abuse going unnoticed, it would follow the same guidelines as any other prescription drug, and be viewed, as it should be, strictly as a prescription drug...."
(Read orig. letter?  Click title)

"Unapologetically pursuing and tracking patterns within the news others make since 2010."