Last month I published an article talking about how moving to a recovery-oriented approach to substance abuse can also be a form of economic development. In particular, I posited that employers implementing hiring programs for people in recovery would be one such strategy. A growing field that could greatly benefit from recruiting new, young energy […]
By now, you probably have seen the now viral video of New Jersey Governor and GOP Presidential candidate Chris Christie talking about the drug abuse crisis. If you haven’t watched it yet, I encourage you to take a few minutes to watch it now before reading the rest of this article: For me, what is […]
On this election night, one of several issues Ohioans were voting on was an initiative to legalize marijuana. The initiative was Issue 3, written and pushed by the legalization group, ResponsibleOhio. Issue 3 asked Ohio voters if they wanted to legalize marijuana, and set up a 10-grower monopoly. Issue 3, and more specifically ResponsibleOhio also gave […]
Democratic Presidential Candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders has made some waves on the topic of marijuana. First, in the Democratic Presidential Debate, he said he would vote in favor of legalizing marijuana if it were on the ballot in Vermont. More recently, he announced that as President, he would push removing marijuana from the Controlled Substances […]
This week Smart Approaches to Marijuana* released a presidential scorecard ranking all of the Republican and Democrat primary candidates according to their policy positions on marijuana. The ranking did not solely focus on the question of legalization, but also examined candidates’ positions on support for prevention and treatment as well as taking a scientific approach to […]
The one area of common ground I had with Paul McCarrier and his group Legalize Maine was that we both agreed that Big Marijuana (aka Marijuana Policy Project; aka Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol) would be bad for Maine. Certainly, we parted ways on the reasons why we didn’t want Big Marijuana here. I […]
Recently, a new study was published in JAMA Psychiatry which details how marijuana use has doubled in the last decade. Over the last ten years, we have seen the proliferation of states passing marijuana medicine by legislation, along with the handful of states legalizing retail marijuana. At the outset when Project SAM (Smart Approaches to […]
Earlier this month, the Maine Legislative Information Office released the list of bill titles the Legislative Council will be considering for the upcoming short session. In all, there are 38 pages of bill proposals. This is a big event in my world as a substance abuse prevention professional, as without fail, there are always many […]
Today I am turning over Smart Approaches to guest columnist (and friend and colleague) Alison Jones Webb who has a great article on Maine’s new overdose prevention law that goes into effect October 15th. If you live in Maine and you think that you are at risk for opioid overdose or if you know […]
Last week I posted this article talking about how moving to a recovery-oriented approach to substance abuse can also be a form of economic development. In particular, I posit that employers implementing hiring programs for people in recovery would be one such strategy. Lo and behold, there are indeed companies out there starting to do […]
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