For an administrative opinion about the legalization of marijuana, we talked to Chad Broer, an assistant principal at Chatterfield High School in Littleton, Colorado, outside of Denver.
1. Has there been an increase among students using marijuana? If so, how does the school handle it? If not, why do you believe it hasn’t changed?
Using the number of suspensions to answer this question, the answer has been no. What has changed is the students’ perception of marijuana, as I hear more comments like, “what’s the big deal?” “it is legal now.”
2. How does your school handle testing for intoxication (at dances, etc) considering there is no on the spot test for marijuana, unlike alcohol?
As of now the only way to test is through blood or a UA, but as a school we are not allowed to give. Therefore, we have to check eyes and smell hands, and we can search students (bags, shoes, socks, pockets, lockers), same as any other state.
Additional information:
It is only legal for people 21 and older. If you have a CO license, you can buy one ounce at a time, and the demand has been steady since becoming legal January 1, 2014. Prior to 2014, if you had a medical marijuana license card, you could buy marijuana legally in Denver County. Living south of Denver County, one can easily see when you arrive in Denver County, the number of marijuana stores outnumbers McDonald’s and Starbucks combined in certain areas. We took the family to a local pizza shop, and next to the restaurant was one shop, one across the street and two more up the road. When driving by one of the stores, you could see a minimum of 15 people standing nicely in line to purchase marijuana; this was also on a Sunday around 5 p.m. Early predictions believe CO will bring in nearly $184 million in taxes during the next 18 months, which equals $10 million a month just from taxes that will go to a variety of causes, including prevention of youth marijuana use, treatment for substance abuse, public health, oversight of new law and law enforcement. Marijuana is taxed 3 times–production, sale and purchase.
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