From 1980 to 1983, I was the principal of Durango High School, a time when my staff and I were fortunate to have a student body largely unaffected by the present marijuana situation in the state.
I am writing to help parents help their students know the truth about marijuana, information largely overlooked in media today.
Marijuana causes brain damage to young people. It’s time for those of you who support “recreational usage” to face up to what you are supporting.
Continuing growth of marijuana usage in Colorado will inevitably lead to a dumbed-down population, one unable to think and reason effectively because of the damage done to their brains in their younger years.
Many of you may choose to look the other way because you see marijuana as just another personal choice, but this is not a matter of belief, but of truth. Marijuana, smoked by those in their teens and all the way up to 25 years of age, inhibits the folding development of the front part of the brain, reducing its growth.
This is the part of the brain wherein reside the abilities to perform what are called the “executive functions:” impulse control, emotional control, flexible thinking, working memory, self-monitoring, planning and prioritization, task initiation and organizing.
Every one of these is vital to thinking ability and the ability to learn new information. Marijuana damages, likely irreparably, the parts of the brain that do these things.
And please, do not invoke the tiresome trope “it’s legal.” What comfort is there in knowing that you are legally destroying children’s brains?
The formation of an underclass of young people in Colorado, a class unable to learn and perform to the best of their abilities, is a present-day reality in progress. And while there may have been a time when these facts about marijuana were in dispute, they are in dispute no longer.
If you desire technical proof, refer to the “Impact of cannabis use on prefrontal and parietal cortex gyrification,” in the July 23, 2015, issue of the Journal of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience.
Richard J.Giordano, Ed.D.
Black Hawk
