Pam Myhra, Seifert's running mate, frets that medical pot induces teens to ruin lives with weed

Friday's debate in the Minnesota House over a medical marijuana bill--so restrictive that even Minnesota's law enforcement community and titular governor Mark Dayton could love it--was marked by deeply emotional floor speeches on both sides of the issue.

As a student of rhetoric, Bluestem doesn't dismiss pathos, so long as ethos and logos don't undercut the tears. But as the pre-WWII Institute for Propaganda Studies suggested when evaluating one sort of emotional argument (the appeal to fear), we ask:

When viewed dispassionately, what are the merits of the speaker's proposal?

In short, that speaker is emotional or appeals to pathos--doesn't disqualify her or his statements. But those emotions should match the evidence and logic.

This leads us to one of the sillier moments of the floor debate, provided by Burnsville Republican Pam Myrha, who will retire after this session to run for higher office as Republican gubernatorial candidate Marty Seifert's lieutenant governor pick.

Myrha yoked the moving stories in "State of Using," a short documentary produced by Intermedia Arts for the Minnesota Youth Council, to a study published by researchers at Columbia University which Myhra asserted demonstrated that teens used more pot in states that legalized medical cannabis.

As Mike McIntee of The Uptake paraphrased her remarks:

Minnesota Rep. Pam Myhra (R-Burnsville) says states that allow medical marijuana have higher rates of teenagers using "weed", which will ruin their lives. Despite Myhra's opposition, the House overwhelmingly approved a limited medical marijuana bill. A more liberal bill has been approved in the Senate.

Here's the video:

Myrha might have drilled down a bit on that study and perhaps consulted Mr. Google a bit more. According to the Boston Globe article, Does medical marijuana change how teens view the drug?, the researchers qualified their findings:

A study published last year [2011] by researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health found that people ages 12 to 17 were more likely to use the drug in states permitting medical marijuana. But some of those states already had higher usage rates before the laws were enacted, so researchers couldn’t rule out the possibility that the prevalence of marijuana use simply made some states more likely to pass the laws.

And a more recent study summarized this February in Science Newsline concluded that Legalizing Medical Marijuana Doesn't Increase Use among Adolescents:

Parents and physicians concerned about an increase in adolescents' marijuana use following the legalization of medical marijuana can breathe a sigh of relief. According to a new study at Rhode Island Hospital which compared 20 years worth of data from states with and without medical marijuana laws, legalizing the drug did not lead to increased use among adolescents. The study is published online in advance of print in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

"Any time a state considers legalizing medical marijuana, there are concerns from the public about an increase in drug use among teens," said principal investigator Esther Choo, M.D., an attending physician in the department of emergency medicine at Rhode Island Hospital. "In this study, we examined 20 years worth of data, comparing trends in self-reported adolescent marijuana use between states with medical marijuana laws and neighboring states without the laws, and found no increase in marijuana use that could be attributed to the law."

Choo continued, "This adds to a growing body of literature published over the past three years that is remarkably consistent in demonstrating that state medical marijuana policies do not have a downstream effect on adolescent drug use, as we feared they might." . . . .

Choo also "holds an academic appointment as an assistant professor of emergency medicine at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University," according to the article.

Frankly, given the restrictions in the House bill on even the gravely ill and deeply suffering obtaining pills and oils manufactured from cannabis, we doubt that Minnesota teens are going to miraculously fancy that smoking street weed is a-okay.

As for the documentary that Myhra mentions, we've watched it via the premier version on Vimeo. Told from the young people's perspective, we found it more a testimony to the role substance abuse plays in mental and family health, than a tool in the War on Drugs.

It's worth a watch, but not as a means to bludgeon the hopes of those Minnesotans seeking safe, regulated and legal medical cannabis. Here it is: