One of the many promises made by proponents of marijuana legalization in California was that it would eliminate the illicit trade in the drug. But like so many other purported benefits, that hasn’t happened yet—and the continuing existence of illegal grow farms is also poisoning wildlife, siphoning precious water, and risking devastating wildfires. Cultivation sites in state forests have rerouted millions of gallons of water in the past two years alone, exacerbating the drought and species endangerment. Growers living on site have started fires—including last year’s 125000-acre Dolan Fire. What’s more, many of the pesticides that drug traffickers—who operate the farms—are so poisonous they’ve been outlawed in the U.S. for decades.
Meanwhile, as more and more states legalize marijuana, they are adding regulations allowing public consumption, an issue that was not addressed in early legalization measures to win wider public support. But now, following Alaska’s move in 2019 to permit weed lounges, other states and cities are jumping on the bandwagon to further commercialization by enacting laws permitting lounges and pot cafes. New legalization laws in both New Mexico and New York allow on-site consumption, and Las Vegas—which currently restricts public use—may soon become home to luxury pot lounges after Nevada became the latest state to end rules on public consumption. Dispensaries are now racing to set up such lounges, as authorities grapple with how to oversee the new businesses.
And finally, an editorial in the Baltimore Sun takes up the issue of dentists who may be fueling the opioid epidemic by routinely prescribing strong prescription painkillers to teens for wisdom teeth extraction. Dentists are the sixth-highest prescribers of opioids in the U.S. to patients between the ages of 10 and 19 years old—the age group at the highest risk of developing opioid use disorder. In fact, a recent study found that hundreds of young people ages 13 to 30 who filled an opioid prescription after a wisdom tooth extraction went on to engage in persistent opioid use in the following year, even after the window for pain relief had closed. So far, the American Dental Association has recommended the use of NSAIDs as the first-line of treatment for dental pain, but has failed to provide clinical practice guidelines—and that is long overdue.