1. Demonstrate Evidence of Close Reading

Directions:

1. Demonstrate evidence of close reading.

2. Highlight or circle the support provided and label its type (LADS SHARE)

3. On a separate sheet of paper, summarize the argument of each piece.

Should Teenagers Get High Instead of Drunk?

Cocaine, tobacco and alcohol use are waning, just as a record proportion of high schoolers use marijuana on a near daily basis. Is that progress?

Not All Drugs Are Created Equal

Robert Gable is an emeritus professor of psychology at Claremont Graduate University.

Twenty years ago, when my son was a teenager, his favorite recreational drug was ecstasy, or MDMA. He claimed that ecstasy was “as safe as alcohol,” and that there was nothing to worry about. Of course, I did worry.

My worry eventually led to a decade-long research project that compared the relative risk of 20 different recreational substances. Here’s the way scientists usually make comparisons of the risk (acute lethality) of various drugs:

First, determine the “effective” dose of the drug. In the case of alcohol, for example, two 12-ounce beers or two 1.5-ounce shots of 80-proof vodka will give a normally healthy teenager a substantial buzz. The beer or the vodka each contain about 33 grams of ethyl alcohol.

Second, determine the “lethal” dose of the drug. Again, in the case of alcohol, hospital records show that people who die from an alcohol overdose have usually ingested about 330 grams of alcohol — equivalent to 20 shots of vodka.

Third, divide the lethal dose by the effective dose. This gives the “safety margin” of the drug. For alcohol, the safety margin is 10 (330 divided by 33 equals 10). In other words, it takes 10 times as much alcohol to kill you as it does to give you a buzz. Note: All such calculations are very rough estimates, and severe toxic reactions can occur at much lower doses depending on the health of the individual.

Based on my research, the safety margin of recreational substances as normally used is: 6 for heroin; 10 for alcohol; 15 for cocaine; 16 for MDMA; 20 for codeine; and 1,000 for LSD or marijuana. Cigarettes have little immediate risk of death because most of the very lethal nicotine is destroyed in the smoke. The long-term risk of addiction and cancer from cigarettes is well known.

No drug is good for teenagers. But when it comes to the chances of immediate death by chemical toxicity, marijuana is about a hundred times safer than alcohol or cocaine

Pot and Alcohol Each Have Risks

Ty Schepis is an assistant professor of psychology at Texas State University, San Marcos.

As a starting point, it helps to drill down and understand what the Monitoring the Future study tells us about how teenagers’ marijuana use is changing. While more high school seniors in the U.S. reported daily marijuana use, the percentage of daily users in the 10th grade is lower than it was for any year from 1996 to 2003. The percentage of teenagers who say they have used marijuana in the last year or the last month is still below the peaks in the late 1990s and early 2000s across students. The more concerning data I see from the study indicate that the perception of “great risk” from regular use has generally fallen year-on-year for the past four (see Pages 10 and 11). Lower perceptions of risk usually coincide with or precede increases in use.

Stating that marijuana use is replacing alcohol use appears true only for daily users, but this has been the case annually since 1994. If we look at use in the past year or the past month, however, alcohol is used by roughly double the proportion of students. Cocaine has never been used as frequently as marijuana. Tobacco may be the one substance that marijuana overtakes, but changing attitudes about tobacco use appear to be the most important driver of this trend.

As to the relative harms of alcohol and marijuana use, alcohol use does cost society more in terms of lost productivity, property damage, injury and mortality. But the proportion of alcohol users is also much higher than the proportion of marijuana users, especially among adults. This highlights the need to frame any discussion in terms of burden per user, not necessarily as a total societal cost.

Furthermore, I am always concerned about describing one drug as less “worrisome” than another. The science indicates that for adolescents, regular and/or heavy use of either alcohol or marijuana is detrimental. Regular adolescent marijuana use is associated with schizophrenia development, suicidal behavior, verbal and spatial memory deficits, executive functioning abnormalities, and a variety of health problems in adulthood. Judging whether regular and/or heavy adolescent marijuana or alcohol use is more detrimental seems imprudent, when the evidence indicates that such frequent use of either substance by adolescents is a significant problem.

Against Drugged Driving

Jill Cooper is the associate director of the Safe Transportation Research and Education Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

The National Institutes of Health has reported that, over the past four years, there has been an increase in teen use of marijuana, as use of alcohol, cigarettes and other drugs has decreased. Contrary to much public perception, marijuana is a serious public health threat facing this age group. It is associated with difficulty in focusing and paying attention and in performing cognitive tests.

Aside from the overall health threats of increased marijuana use, from the standpoint of traffic safety alone, this is a dangerous portent. The chemicals in marijuana have been proven to interfere with key driving skills: attentiveness, visual scanning, orientation ability and basic motor skills, as well as perception of time and speed. While claims have been made that marijuana use could make people safer drivers since they tend to drive more slowly while under its influence, the alleged safety benefits are speculative, at best.

Currently, data on marijuana use while driving has been hard to collect for a number of reasons, including the difficulty in conducting drugged driving assessments, and substantiating drug impairment in court. This is being resolved through improved police training on assessing impairment, as well as new research on the prevalence of drugged driving.

It is important that the news about rising marijuana use and falling alcohol use among teens does not obscure the fact that alcohol continues to be a very real threat to teen drivers. Teens are at greater risk of dying in an alcohol-related crash than other age groups, and they have a greater crash risk than adult drunk drivers when they do drink and drive. After alcohol, cannabis is the drug most frequently found in the system of drivers in crashes.

We should not feel that teens are safer stoned than drunk. Why would we want anyone with diminished skills, either as a result of cannabis use or alcohol use, operating a machine made of two tons of steel?

Not a Good Age for Slow Motion

Deon Price, a youth career transition instructor for the Department of Labor, is a motivational speaker and youth life-skills coach in Northern California.

Should we be optimistic about the recent revelation that more teens are smoking marijuana than doing other drugs like cocaine or meth? My first reaction is emotional, and sounds like a parent: “No way! How could doing any drug be good news on any level?” The second take is a little calmer: we can rationalize that marijuana is much less reckless and life-threatening than alcohol, meth, crack or even “skittles,” which can refer to a variety of prescription medications. And yes, this drug has become more acceptable because of legalization efforts and the modern use (or excuse) of it being used for medicinal purposes, giving it less of a stigma than most other types of recreational drugs. But in the end, let's be honest: marijuana use is still a very ill-advised idea for youth who are transitioning into adulthood.

You don't want to miss out on a job or be rejected by a school because of a failed drug test.

The first reason is obvious: Hello – it's still illegal! Anyone using it recreationally could end up facing charges. Second, many employers, training programs and even educational institutions are doing urinalysis or drug tests, which could result in disqualification. Third, marijuana hinders motivation. Pot relaxes people to the point that they are unmotivated, and the more frequent users are less active in other endeavors. This is the wrong time for young people to be in slow motion. In today’s competitive environment, you need to be at the top of your game. And finally, this is a psychoactive drug. Yes, marijuana can benefit people with many serious medical conditions, like AIDS, cancer, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis and chronic pain. However, there is a reason doctors don't advise healthy people to take it: research has found harmful effects on the central nervous system, and it hinders memory.

Contrary to popular opinion, an increase in the number of youth using marijuana is not harmless.

The Law Adds to the Harm

Joseph D. McNamara, retired police chief of San Jose, Calif., is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

The appearance of any new study indicating an increase in marijuana use by youth is always a prelude to a renewed government surge in America’s war on drugs. But let’s be realistic about our options. It's not as though tough enforcement keeps kids away from marijuana. Usage goes up and down no matter what we do. By keeping marijuana illegal, we nudge youngsters into contact with real criminals engaged in the drug trade. Then we bust kids, giving them a criminal record.

We shouldn't, of course, recommend to kids that they get high on pot instead of drunk on booze or blasted on coke, but recognizing that they may not be the perfect children that we were, the following facts speak for themselves: No one ever died from using marijuana, unlike alcohol or cocaine. Marijuana tends to mellow people, but we know alcohol and cocaine excites some into violence. Driving under any of these drugs is a no-no, but cocaine and alcohol are more likely to produce speeding and reckless driving than marijuana is. Both the law and common sense clearly show that a designated driver is the way to travel.

The scare tactics — raising alarms about youngsters falling under the evil spell of marijuana and tumbling down the slippery slope to a lifetime of degradation and crime — are used to ward off hard questions. The real policy question is not how to save kids from the bogeyman scare scenes depicted in "Reefer Madness," the government's ludicrous 1930s film advocating a ban on marijuana. Instead we should be asking: Is the drug war worth fighting? Is there such a thing as victory? Are the methods we employ worse than the supposed evils they are meant to prevent?

Alcohol prohibition from 1920 to 1933 taught the federal government that it pays to emphasize the “protect our youth” angle. This intimidates many from daring to question some of the corruption and unnecessary deaths and injuries resulting from violent drug enforcement. Even I, a former anti-drug warrior, am hesitant to risk being attacked as encouraging kids to think any drug use is harmless and cool. Yet I have joined thousands of former hard-charging cops, prosecutors and judges in an organization called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which unequivocally states that people can cure past drug excess, but can never cure the damage of a conviction and a youthful trip into the world of crime and the criminal justice system.

Not to Be Taken Lightly

Brian E. Perron is an Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Michigan.

Our understanding of marijuana has come a long way since the release of the film “Reefer Madness.” Marijuana doesn’t cause insanity, and most addiction experts would agree that marijuana is arguably safer than alcohol and other drugs in a variety of ways. For example, marijuana cannot lead to a fatal overdose. While heavy users of marijuana can experience withdrawal symptoms, the withdrawal symptoms are far less severe than withdrawal associated with alcohol, cocaine and heroin. And, unlike these other substances, good evidence exists regarding the therapeutic benefits of marijuana for a range of medical problems.

Drugs and alcohol affect the body and mind in different ways. Any intoxication caused by a psychoactive substance causes some degree of impairment, which necessarily increases the risk of negative consequences. However, research shows that the likelihood of medical emergencies, traffic fatalies and violent crime due to marijuana use, generally speaking, is lower in comparison to alcohol and other substances.

While compelling arguments can be made that marijuana is “safer” than alcohol and other drugs, I don’t think we should view marijuana use with the same levity as Harold and Kumar do in their adventures to White Castle. The bottom line is that an increase in marijuana use among the teenage population is not good, even if rates for more problematic substances are on the decline. Foremost, we are unclear of the long-term consequences of marijuana use on the developing brain of the adolescent. The potency of marijuana has also increased significantly over the years. Thus, along with an increased sensation of euphoria, we can expect an increase in its addictive potential. The research is also clear that early involvement with substances is associated with heavier use and a variety of other problems later in life. From this perspective, marijuana may be associated with fewer risks in comparison to other substances, but marijuana use does introduce its own set of known and possibly unexpected problems that are deeply concerning.

A permissive view of marijuana use among adolescents is hardly the answer. Neither is the seemingly endless war on drugs, especially marijuana. Further research is needed to fully understand both the negative consequences as well as its therapeutic potential. This seems to be the only reasonable solution to constructing effective policy and prevention efforts.