News & Views
Record-breaking level of 12th graders say they’re more likely to use legal marijuana
Marijuana use is up in the last year among American middle-school and high-school students, and legalizing the drug likely would mean many more underage marijuana users, according to Monitoring the Future, one of the United States' largest studies of students' drug...
Introducing ImpACT for adolescents: A training manual for mental health professionals
I am pleased to share this treatment manual, impACT: Motivational Interviewing/Acceptance Commitment Training for Adolescents with Substance Use and Co-occurring Problems. It is yours, free for the download. Though this is a guide for therapists, impACT could help a...
Public agencies need to do more to communicate marijuana product recalls
Marijuana product recalls in Colorado are not consistently, widely or even transparently communicated to the public online -- and that concerns a growing number of healthcare providers. Among them is Dr. Ken Finn, a Colorado Springs physician whose group practice,...
Data don’t support claims U.S. has clogged jails with marijuana users
When discussing marijuana and THC, we often hear people express support for the drug's legalization because they believe doing so would unclog American jails and prisons. That pervasive belief is just not supported by local, state and federal public records -- as The...
Addressing Gov. John Hickenlooper’s claims that youth marijuana use is down
One year ago, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper claimed on national television that since the state sanctioned recreational marijuana use, there was no increase in teenage use of the drug and black-market sales had shrunk. His claims have been repeated thousands of...
Vaping linked to increased risk of tobacco use
If there's anything we should know by now, it's that sellers of addictive substances are continually and intently focused on the development of new products that create lifelong customers. So, there is very good reason to be skeptical of claims that e-cigarette use --...
Study reinforces link between adolescent marijuana use, psychosis
Researchers reporting in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) have found that both adolescent cannabis use and cigarette use are associated with increased risk of psychosis. The association was greater for cannabis, according to their study,...
Federal Study: Colorado’s mixed bag of pot
The latest National Survey on Drug Use and Health contains good, bad and ugly news. I'll take it from the top -- and focus on youth marijuana use in Colorado, where I serve as medical director of one of the state's largest adolescent addiction-treatment programs and...
White House addresses national ‘crisis of drug use, addiction and drug deaths’
The United States' rates of drug use, abuse and addiction have become a "national public health emergency" that the country can overcome with the combined efforts of more Americans who are determined to prevent and end the scourge, President Donald J. Trump announced...
Study: Little to no evidence cannabis alleviates chronic pain
A new review of nearly 14,000 research articles and studies has found there is little to no evidence that cannabis alleviates chronic pain in adults. The full report, funded by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Quality Enhancement Research Initiative and...
Read the book
Clearing the Haze is a guide designed to help parents determine whether their child may have a substance problem and, if so, how to begin to address it. This book includes the voices and insight of experts in substance abuse counseling, young people in recovery, and parents who have lived the nightmare of adolescent addiction.