Editor:
Last week the Santa Monica City council threw our kids under the bus, and will allow the (formerly) medicinal cannabis-store one block from Lincoln Middle School to sell non-medicinal pot. It was initially proposed as medicinal-only, but the bait-and-switch has been successful.
This is a disaster, and a foretaste of what is planned. Our entire city, including third street, will be overrun with pot-stores and smoke-lounges - council members strongly hinted as much. They are blind to the harms, and see nothing but campaign dollars.
Parents have been left flat-footed as the council claims that the pittance of tax money is somehow worthwhile... At least it seems worth destroying our kids for.
We can predict that pot-stores will open next to all our schools in the near future. Sure kids aren’t legally able to buy the stuff, but they will get someone to buy it for them. The criminal penalty is an utterly toothless slap on the wrist.
Parents aren’t able to keep up with all this, as they have lives to lead, and due to pot-industry propaganda parents have no idea of the harm it does to kids. Today’s cannabis is far, far stronger than it used to be. Heavy pot use increases the risk of schizophrenia (a very serious mental illness) by more than four times, and causes permanent structural damage to growing brains. Our city council is pretending to be pro-family while selling out to business and destroying kids as though they don’t exist.
It must be said again: The fact that Santa Monica is allowing a pot store to open one block from Lincoln middle school shows that the council doesn’t give a damn, and that pot is more important than kids. Proximity counts. Studies have shown that the presence of pot stores increases underage consumption, even if illegal.
Even now middle-schoolers are stealing (undetectable, candy-style) edibles from parents and siblings and sharing them in restrooms and getting high at school. To say nothing what is happening at SaMoHi.
The social pressure to get stoned at school is incredible. And the permanent damage to kids minds and achievements are clinically proven over and over again.
I urge all parents to research the real harm that pot does, and to think about what having a city-approved pot-store next to a school does to kids attitudes to pot. This is happening in real-time right in front of us, and is one of the few things that parents can fight against at a local level to protect their children. Look at your kids - do you want them to get stoned at school? If the answer is no and you take no action then what happens will be entirely your own fault.
Peter Borresen, Santa Monica
