Over-Drugged and Under-Educated

It can be said:  “We are over-drugged and under-educated.”  The moral supports enabling young people to just say, “No,” have especially corroded since the negation of the influence of religion was instituted in the public schools in the sixties.  The gateway drugs of tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana have increasingly become problems in the youth culture, often leading to heavier, more dangerous drug use.  Educational achievement has plummeted since 1965, as evidenced by testing.

It has been noted by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) that: “The United States is a drug culture.  The American people and their children are perpetually bombarded with messages that encourage them to imbibe and medicate with a variety of substances.  We routinely alter our states of consciousness through conventional means such as alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, and prescription medications.  In this context, and acknowledging that legal-illegal distinctions are irrelevant to many adolescents, experimentation with mind-altering substances such as marijuana could be defined as ‘normal’.”  But normal is not necessarily right!

Selling tobacco or alcohol to underage people is illegal, and the sale of marijuana is illegal, although some states are flirting with the idea of making it legal for adults to tax it as they do alcohol and tobacco.  But “marijuana use is especially problematic during the peak learning years,” said John P. Walters, the ONDCP director.

Marijuana, although not addictive in the same ways as alcohol and tobacco, is much more destructive to the mental development of youth than either of the other two.  According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, sixty percent of the drug using youth under twenty-one years of age use marijuana more than any other illicit drug. Marijuana is both illegal and more destructive to learning than other gateway drugs.

The main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana is delta nine(9) tetrahydrocannabinol, better known as THC, a substance many times more concentrated in modern marijuana than it was in the past.  Usually, marijuana is used in small amounts and often shared with multiple users, so that the occasional smoker gets part of a joint.  However, regular users may need more than just part of a joint to get the same high, and heavy users may smoke multiple joints daily.  THC gives a high that will vanish after a few hours, but it still can remain in the body for several weeks.  It fades, but it has been shown that those who used marijuana for many years had markedly lower income and education levels than control groups, whether still using the drug or not.

THC interferes with short-term memory.  Many people become anxious, even panicky, since the physical effects include increased heart rate, increased blood pressure and dilation of blood vessels in the eyes.  It is linked to disruption of sex hormones in men and women.  It dilates the bronchial tubes and irritates the lining of the lungs.  When I taught in public schools about the dangers of drug use and abuse it was important to stress that a single joint contained the same amount of tar and noxious substances as about 15 cigarettes, which should have raised the question about the danger of lung cancer and pot smoking.  Marijuana is not Good for Your Health — Mentally or Physically.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports that students exposed to anti-drug messages are twenty-five percent less likely to use the drug, a much greater reduction than has been observed through marijuana prohibition.   A study at Harvard University showed that the government would spend US$8.6 billion in 2007 on marijuana prohibition enforcement, and who knows how much more it is now.

It is important to focus on the mental and physical areas, but much of our problem is that we have excluded the spiritual.  It has been observed that:  “Religious faith plays a key role in keeping kids drug free, as kids brought up in religious faith are only half (fifty-percent) as likely to try marijuana as kids who don’t. Religious faith helps to prevent teen marijuana use and other risky behaviors.”  In the 1950s, church attendance reached an all-time high percentage in America, but then neglect of the spiritual focus hit the scene in our public schools, and we can see how drug addiction and abuse has rapidly developed.

Robert L. DuPont in, Getting Tough on Gateway Drugs wrote: “The role of religion in the prevention and treatment of drug dependence has been emphasized frequently in this book. Religious faith is a system of values, which transcend the individual and his unique time on earth, to say nothing of the individual’s momentary pleasure. Religious faith is a way of knowing who one is, where one is, where one comes from, and where one is going, and what the purpose of life really is….As such, religion is, at least, a helpful part of drug prevention and at most, an indispensable part of real recovery.”

In light of this it would seem right to say Marijuana Use is not Good for One Spiritually.   Mrs. Ruth Graham once told me, “for everything God has real, the devil has a counterfeit for it.” And marijuana is just such a counterfeit often grasped in order to fill a spiritual vacuum.   When we neglect the power of religion as a gateway to deterrence of illicit drug use and abuse, it seems we are going to continue to be “over-drugged and under-educated.”

by Joe Renfro, Ed.D., Radio Evangelist, Retired Teacher and Pastor, Box 751, Lavonia, Georgia 30553, 706-356-4173, joerenfro@windstream.net