Wood County Prevention Coalition
Uniting For A Drug-Free Community Since 2004
Medical Marijuana Laws Are Still Hazy
By Samantha Phillips, The Jambar
19-Jan-2017
The Youngstown State University Board of Trustees approved a resolution last month stating that YSU will enforce policies prohibiting the use of medical marijuana on campus, despite the state of Ohio legalizing medical marijuana in September 2016.
The Drug-Free Environment Policy was modified by the board to clarify that the university will still prohibit medical marijuana from being possessed on campus or in dorms.
The December board meeting summary states, “… students who are legally authorized Ohio medical marijuana users and are living in university-owned or -managed housing may submit a letter with supporting documentation asking to be released from their university housing obligations.”
House Bill 523, which legalized medical marijuana in the Buckeye State, creates a conflict between state and federal law, because federal laws still prohibit using any part of a cannabis plant for medicinal purposes.
Cindy Kravitz, director of Equal Opportunity and Policy Development, explained that the university must follow federal laws to protect its federal funding, and they must establish and enforce clear policies on marijuana.
“If you don’t comply with the Drug-Free Schools and Communities and Controlled Substances Act, the university could lose all its federal funding, meaning grants, research money and financing,” Kravitz said.
Even in states like Colorado, where marijuana use is liberal, public universities still ban the drug so they can preserve their federal funding, she said.
Carole Weimer, board member, said other public universities are dealing with the conflicting legislations as well. She said she is concerned that students might wrongfully think people can smoke marijuana for medicinal reasons before getting a prescription.
“Because it’s a new law, there will be challenges in interpreting it,” she said. “We have to make sure it’s enforced appropriately. … We can’t have people standing outside Kilcawley smoking weed.”
Another conflict is that although HB 523 legalized medical marijuana in Ohio, there is no legal way to access the drug. Under the Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act, it is illegal to grow cannabis or transport it from other states, and there are no licensed medical marijuana dispensaries in Ohio.
It may be another year until patients in Ohio can access medical marijuana, which makes possessing the drug at YSU illegal, according to Cleveland.com.
Weimer said when doctors begin prescribing medical marijuana to patients, YSU’s policy will allow students to ingest the edibles or oils at home, but they still must steer clear of having it on campus or in dorms.
“That would probably affect students living on campus,” she said. “They can’t have it in their possession and use it on campus, because it’s still federally prohibited.”
Ohio public universities are reluctant to establish policies that allow medicinal marijuana because there have been no cases to set a precedent since the law is new.
Kelly Beers, director of Student Code of Conduct, said the law gives someone who is caught possessing marijuana an affirmative defense in court.
“Legalized marijuana has never really been ‘allowed’ under federal law, but HB 523 gives someone in possession a positive defense,” she said. “But we can’t supersede the federal law.”
Students caught possessing, using or distributing marijuana for medicinal reasons will be punished under the federal law. Beers said the punishment will depend on how much marijuana the student has and how the police handle the case. Punishments range from probation to expulsion.
Some students, such as Hannah Jefferson, a literature major, said she doesn’t see a problem with prohibiting smoking the drug on campus because it could affect other people, but she thinks it should be allowed in some forms.“As far as edibles, pills or other forms go, it’s not the school’s business,” she said.Jefferson said she is concerned because she believes the prohibition could lead to banning prescriptions like antidepressants, which can also be abused.
Narcotic pain pills still plentiful
By Alan Johnson, The Columbus Dispatch
15-Jan-2017
Heroin and fentanyl grab the headlines, but narcotic painkillers still fill Ohio medicine cabinets.
Drug-overdose deaths in Ohio continue to soar, with the 2016 toll expected to far exceed the record 3,050 in 2015. Increasingly, heroin and fentanyl are responsible for overdose deaths.
But narcotic pain pills such as OxyContin continue to be a problem. Records show that many Ohioans get dozens of pills a year. Significantly, that’s usually the starting point for people who later become addicted to heroin and other hard drugs. Almost no one goes directly to heroin, experts say.
State officials have made strides in slowing the flow of addictive pain pills by increasing law enforcement, toughening state laws and restricting doctors and pharmacists. The Ohio Automated Rx Reporting System, the computer system that tracks how drugs are prescribed and dispensed, shows that 2.6 million people received 11.2 million prescriptions for opioid pills in 2015, the last full year for which statistics are available. There were 684.2 million pills dispensed in 2015, an 11.3 percent drop from 2010.
OARRS reports legitimate pill transactions, not illegal use.
A deeper dive shows what’s happening with pills in Ohio’s 88 counties. In the third quarter last year:
■ Vinton County: 281,252 pills dispensed, 201.5 per patient, 20.9 per capita.
■ Jackson County: 807,620 pills, 194.9 per patient, 24.3 per capita.
■ Ross County, 1,663,614 pills, 182.2 per patient, 21.3 per capita.
■ Scioto County, 1,737,205 pills, 165.6 per patient, 21.9 per capita.
■ Franklin County, 14,850,005 pills, 141.8 per patient, 12.8 per capita.
Small and rural, Vinton County is the unexpected state leader in narcotic pills dispensed per patient. Travis West, director of the Ohio State University extension office in Vinton County and chairman of the county drug task force, said it’s unclear why the pill numbers are so high.
“The poverty rate is high here and people are not working,” West said. The drug problem has become a big drain on the county’s limited budget.
“The ultimate goal of the task force is to pull together agencies, law enforcement and elected officials who are concerned about the problem.”
One place the effects of the drug problem shows up in a big way is in the foster care system, West said.
“I was just at a meeting last month, and children’s services had more kids in foster care in Vinton County than other counties around us that are a lot larger.” About 95 percent of foster cases are the result of parents being addicted to drugs and unable to adequately care for their children.
In Scioto County, the epicenter of the early proliferation of “pill mills,” painkillers are harder to get these days and are less frequently abused, said Lisa Roberts, a public health nurse at the Portsmouth Health Department who has tracked the opioid epidemic for years. The bad news is that many users have switched to heroin, she said.
“We were awash in pain pills. They were available to everyone. Now, it’s very difficult to get a prescription for painkillers,” Roberts said.
Orman Hall, former head of drug addiction programs for the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, said Gov. John Kasich’s administration has successfully pushed prevention efforts for youth. Of 5,581 Ohio overdoses deaths in 2014-15, just 11 were 18 or younger.
But overdose deaths overall continue rising at a record pace, notes Hall, who now works for the Ohio High Intensity Drug Traffic Area, an agency focused on drug trafficking and money laundering.
“I strongly suspect that some physicians who identify patients exposed to large amounts of opioids are discontinuing treatment due to the suspicion of addiction,” Hall said. “Many of these opioid-dependent patients are turning to the illicit drug market which is now dominated by heroin and illicit fentanyl.”
Both heroin and fentanyl are cheap (one-tenth the street value of pills) and readily available, he said.
Evidence Growing of Link Between Youth Exposure to Alcohol Marketing and Youth Drinking
10-Jan-2017 9:05 AM EST
Newswise — A new analysis of 12 long-term studies published since 2008 from across the globe finds that young people under the legal drinking age who are more exposed to alcohol marketing appear more likely to start drinking early and also to engage in binge drinking.
A 2008 analysis established a link between exposure to alcohol marketing and drinking behavior in young people. This new systematic review -- the first in nearly a decade -- identifies 12 additional studies, broadening and strengthening the science in this area. All of the new studies found an association between level of marketing exposure and youth drinking behavior and found that exposure to ads was even more strongly associated with progression to binge drinking than with initiation of alcohol use.
The research was led by the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY), part of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and published in a special issue of the journal Addiction focused entirely on alcohol marketing and public health.
“This latest review of the scientific literature adds stronger evidence to the claim that exposure to alcohol marketing among youth is linked to more underage youth drinking and, in particular, binge drinking,” says study leader David Jernigan, PhD, the director of CAMY and an associate professor in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society at the Bloomberg School. “Studies are documenting this exposure, which includes marketing and ads on television, the internet and social media, as well as on the radio, in magazines and at sporting and other events.”
Binge drinking, defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as consuming four or more drinks within two hours for women and five or more drinks for men, is associated with a long list of negative public health consequences, including sexual assaults, violence, attempted suicide and illicit drug use.
Alcohol is the leading cause of death and disability for males ages 15 to 24 in nearly every region of the world, and females of the same age in the wealthy countries and the Americas. In the United States, excessive alcohol use is responsible for an average of 4,350 deaths every year among people under the legal drinking age of 21.
The researchers relied upon four different medical and scientific databases to identify articles for possible inclusion in the review. Studies were included in the final review if they met a number of criteria, including whether they used original data and included measures of marketing exposure and alcohol consumption for at least 500 underage youth. Studies were included only if they used self-reported and observed actual alcohol use such as binge drinking, as opposed to just measures of intentions to consume alcohol in the future. The studies were conducted in seven countries and involved more than 35,000 participants.
In the United States, alcohol advertising and marketing is primarily self-regulated by the alcohol industry, whereby the industry sets its own guidelines with respect to limiting exposure to young people.
Several of the included studies found that levels of marketing exposure appear to be as high or nearly as high among younger adolescents as they are among older adolescents and young adults, suggesting that current voluntary alcohol industry marketing codes are not protecting kids as young as 10 years old.
“Public health policies that can reduce or mitigate the effect of alcohol marketing exposure on youth drinking behavior are sorely needed,” Jernigan says. “With numerous countries considering greater restrictions on alcohol marketing, the findings of these studies signal the public health importance of that debate.”
Wood County Prevention Coalition Meeting Set for February 17, 2017 (RSVP Below)
Wood County Prevention Coalition Meeting
Friday, Feb 17, 2017, 08:30 AM
Wood County Educational Service Center, 1867 N Research Drive, Bowling Green, OH
RSVPs are enabled for this event.
About Us
Our Vision: Helping youth be drug-free, productive and responsible citizens.
Our Mission: We are a coalition of compassionate community members working together to coordinate high quality programs for the prevention of youth substance abuse in Wood County.
Email: mkarna@wcesc.org
Website: wcprevention.org
Location: 1867 Research Drive, Bowling Green, OH, United States
Phone: (419)-354-9010
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WCPCoalition
Twitter: @woodpccoalition