It’s a joint effort: Educating youth on the dangers of cannabis

In March 2021, marijuana in New York was legalized for recreactional use in adults 21-years-old and up. Although it was legalized, many children, ages five or younger, have fallen victim to cannabis posioning. Evident in the increase in hospitalizations due to this type of poisoning, parent groups and Nassau County have become alarmingly aware of the improper storage and usage of cannabis. There is an education push throughout New York state in the appropriate ways to use marijuana, talk about it and protecting children and minors in the process.

Manyparents trust their children’s schools to educate them on substance use and abuse, but should they?

In 2018, Dorian Fuhrman did only to learn later that an anti-addiction speaker had presented misinformation about e-cigarettes to her son and his friend, suggesting at a ninth-grade assembly that they were safer alternatives to smoking cigarettes (they aren’t) and that they might receive approval by the Food and Drug Administration (they didn’t).

That was the beginning of the national grassroots organization PAVe, Parents Against Vaping E-cigarettes. “We deal mostly with flavored e cigarette products, we don’t deal with cannabis. We teach parents how to talk to their kids about vaping anything,” said Fuhrman, who co-founded the group. “We talk to parents about what are the physical effects, what are the dangers.”

Many young people falsely believe that vaping marijuana is safer than smoking it, but it’s not, according to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration. In fact, the effects of vaping cannabis can be more intense than smoking it. At the same time, in New York, legalization of marijuana has brought an increasing number of young children into close contact with cannabis products.

Cannabis was legalized for recreational adult use in New York in March 2021 under the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act (MRTA). According to a report by the New York City Poison Control Center, in New York City, Long Island and Westchester, the cases of exposure to cannabis products among children younger than 5 has increased dramatically since then.

In 2018, there were three cases of exposure to cannabis products in children under 5, which jumped to 146 in 2022, a nearly 30-fold increase over four years.

“We do see that it’s running rampant in in New York, and kids are able to access these products,” Fuhrman said.

Get the Conversation Rolling

In 2022, multiple Long Island communities came together to start an educational campaign surrounding the dangers of marijuana use while driving and involving children. The initiative, begun by the YES Community Counseling Center’s PACT (Partnering in Action and Change for Tomorrow) initiative, is working to inform parents and the community at large on marijuana and other drug use.

“The campaign itself is really targeted towards parents,” said Hillary Alvarez, the Let’s Be Blunt program coordinator. It’s critical that parents with young children at home lock up their cannabis products, she said.

At the same time, all adults who use marijuana must understand that using it and driving is unsafe, potentially deadly, as it impairs driving ability. She added that it is impossible to judge precisely how long the effects of marijuana will last, as it affects each person differently, unlike alcohol, whose effects generally wear off after about an hour with one drink.

Of PACT, Alvarez said, “This is not just a bunch of old people sitting around saying, Don’t do drugs, right. We really want it to be a conversation.”

The Stoned Age: An Alternative View

Marijuana disrupts cognitive function, or the ability to make decisions, but it also is used medically to relieve anxiety, epilepsy, nausea in chemotherapy patients, chronic pain, PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and other conditions.

Ezra Parzybok, a cannabis business consultant, approaches marijuana in an atypical way. His company, Blue Skies Unlimited LLC, is a startup consulting firm that guides clients through the business side of the cannabis industry. Educating parents, medical providers and people in general on the nature of the drug is a large part of what he does.

Parzybok explained how, medically, the use of cannabis therapeutics “is basically trying to dial in or trying to bring more thoughtful care and medical approaches to using this incredibly complex plant towards bringing brain relief to people.”

“The number of kids that die by going into the emergency room because they’ve ingested something in the home is exponentially larger,” Parzybok said, “than the number of kids who are going into an emergency room for cannabis, because they don’t die from it.”

Parzybok compared cannabis’ effects to the dangers of alcohol, saying that alcohol damages organs and overuse can lead to death. That does not mean that cannabis should be used irresponsibly, but he said he believes it’s more benign than alcohol.

High Hopes for the Future

Everyone agrees that the conversation around marijuana must begin with young people early.

“You have to start the conversation early so that, first of all, your child knows the dangers of these products, but also your child feels that they can come to you if they have a problem,” Fuhrman said.

“Education is really important, and balanced education,” Parzybok said. By balanced education, he means presenting the potential medical benefits of marijuana use. In this way, young people will understand that many older people, potentially their grandparents, take cannabis products to aid with sleep or relieve pain. Only telling children about the potential dangers of marijuana can lead to confusion in young people who see adults safely using it for medicinal purposes, while at the same time “creating a culture of shame.”

“And that,” Parzybok said, “can be harmful.”