Is dabbing causing mental health problems for Colorado kids?Lindsey B. King •
Editor’s note: After 5280′
s July issue went to press, Governor Jared Polis signed into law HB 21-1317, which requires further study of the possible health effects of high-THC cannabis and aims to reduce access to cannabis among teenagers. This article has been updated to reflect the new law.
There’s no shortage of sensational, hide-the-children, marijuana-is-the-devil’s-lettuce stories on the internet. This is not one of those stories. Colorado is, after all, the cradle of recreational cannabis in this country, and by most accounts, the destruction of civilized society wreaked by commercialized medical and recreational pot was greatly exaggerated. Given the opportunity to comment, most Coloradans roughly 71 percent, according to a 2020 survey say legalization has been mostly or completely successful. However, that number leaves plenty of room for dissent, and in that remaining 29 percent
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said in an email to CPR that employers can require COVID-19 vaccination for in-person work for their employees, but an employee may be entitled to an exemption through the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Bruce Wilcox, president of the local teachers’ union, the Aurora Education Association, said he believes that vaccines are an important component in keeping students and educators safe and would like districts to work with staff if staff can’t get the vaccine for medical or religious reasons.
“We will work to ensure that all educators know their rights so that they can make an informed decision,” he said.
“What’s there to live for? Why am I here?”
That’s what one 86-year-old man living alone in Thornton recently told Jayla Sanchez-Warren, who leads a regional agency on aging, as she tried to help him get vaccinated against COVID-19.
“He was struggling to get a vaccine and was frustrated. His wife had died, I think three years ago. He didn’t have family in the area,” she said. “He was feeling this malaise.”
She said his despair is a typical symptom of a “failure to thrive,” a term many experts in aging use to describe what they’ve been seeing a lot of this past year of the pandemic. Other symptoms include isolation, loneliness and depression. That’s often followed by a lack of desire, or inability to eat, or get nutritious food for yourself.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR News
Coloradans 65 and older are now receiving vaccine shots after suffering the worst of both direct, and indirect, effects from COVID-19.
In 2020, COVID-19 ravaged the state s nursing homes, forcing an end to visitation by family and friends and lockdowns of residents. That in turn appears to have contributed to a hidden toll from the disease for some Colorado seniors.
Starvation.
As many as 100 more seniors than expected, most of them in nursing homes, essentially stopped eating in 2020 and died of what is clinically termed nutritional deficiencies on state death certificates.
COVID-19 has now officially claimed more than 5,500 Colorado lives, but as state health officials finish compiling records from the deadliest year in state history, hundreds of additional deaths, which appear to have at least an arm’s length connection to the pandemic, are becoming apparent.
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