Dear Editor,

Could Ray Lozano be the real gateway to hard drugs? …and by that I mean misinformation. I do not mean Ray Lazono or his colleagues are out there putting a needle into some child’s vein. But what I do mean is the misinformation Ray Lazono and others like him preach – and, I might add, make a very good living doing so – is what many times does make that child make the very worst decision they could have ever made, shooting Heroin of Cocaine, and that is from misinformation.

Please, all of you, I can tell you from the bottom of my heart, I do not want anyone’s child to use drugs; period. I watched my cousin rot away from liver cancer because of alcohol and heroin use. But with that being said, Kids will experiment; and if the facts are true, at NHS over 90% of seniors have tried Cannabis. And I don’t know the figures but I would guess as many or more when it comes to Alcohol.

These are just the facts; it is not pro or against anything – just facts that kids do experiment. But I can tell you from my own experiences as a child, or the 100s of stories I heard that were very similar in NA and AA meetings, that I found myself addicted to hard drugs at the age of 18 and that was not because I tried Cannabis per se. It was because when I and these hundreds of others I have listened to over the years say “after I tried Pot and realized nothing happened permanently, I did not have the urge to immediately use again. I was not hooked after that 1st puff.”

So I thought to myself, if they are lying about this, they must be lying about all of it. And that information came from my Mom & Dad with all the literature and props given to them from my well-meaning Uncle who was a Police Detective at the time. So I tried many substances until one grabbed a hold of me so hard it would not let go for 40 years on and off and to this day I have to have my guard up against that drug.

I absolutely agree with Ray Lozano on one of his points: “Kids get Bored!” But I do not think that is anything none of us did not already know, and we all know when kids are bored they can get themselves in trouble. The problem I have with Ray is what he presented as Science. It was not factual or it was so watered down that I would consider it an insult to teach that to anyone, especially my Child that is in School to learn.

“Corrective Fluid” --  Ray talked about this magical fluid that surrounds our brains and filters our thought process. There is a fluid that does surround your brain and also travels through a sac connected to your spinal column; it is called CSF or Cerebral Spinal Fluid and the filtering of information that comes into your brain is not its function, but it does provide important critical functions in our body.

It is a clear, colorless bodily fluid found in the brain and spine. It is produced in the choroid plexus of the brain. It acts as a cushion or buffer for the brain's cortex, providing basic mechanical and immunological protection to the brain inside the skull, and it serves a vital function in cerebral autoregulation of cerebral blood flow. The CSF occupies the subarachnoid space (the space between the arachnoid mater and the pia mater) and the ventricular system around and inside the brain and spinal cord. It constitutes the content of the ventricles, cisterns, and sulci of the brain, as well as the central canal of the spinal cord.

What Ray is doing when he speaks of this fantasy “Corrective Fluid,” he is telling half-truths at best. He is hoping you remember fluid around the brain.  So you get home, Google fluid around the brain, and say, “wow, there really is a “Corrective Fluid.” At this point it doesn’t matter that it is not for what Ray says it was or even called that, but he got you to believe him.

I think our Children and their Parents deserve better than this. Nederland is not a community that has to be talked down to. Our Children, their parents, and the rest of Nederland’s Citizens are far smarter than this. Every Study he presented has been discredited, some very badly. Some of those studies were commissioned as long ago as the 70s and 80s, when our Federal Government had no interest in funding studies that told the truth about cannabis rather the opposite.

Do I think we should have speakers that come to our schools and engage our kids about Drugs? I sure do. But I think we could do so much better than a guy that has been saying the same thing over and over for years, and I guess expecting a different result??? Because it has not worked at all, so he must expect it is going to produce a different result. That is pretty much the definition of insanity.

And I think it is just that, to have speakers saying the same old tired thing he was saying when he was hugging Nancy Reagan in 1986, and now saying it at the Nederland Community Center in 2015, and making a good buck doing so. The road is paved with good intentions all the way down to the rehab center and the cemetery. And I say telling our children lies instead of the truth is one of the biggest causes of hard drug addiction and alcoholism.

In closing, all I would ask is that we spend what precious resources we have for our kids, whether it be tax dollars, State and Federal grants, or whatever, on a bit more infrastructure to keep kids from getting bored and to educate them through serious age-appropriate real talks using real science and presented by people that are experts in their field – not a probation officer trying to explain neurophysiology who has been making money both from the criminal justice system our Kids get thrown into as well as exploiting the alleged answer to the problem.

Does anyone in town know we have a respected Citizen right here in town who has written a Children’s book about Cannabis and Children? And there it is, folks: the discussion needs to start way earlier then we start them now. Many times, by the time a Child has turned 12 he or she has become a young adult and may no longer be paying attention to what most Adults say to them if any. Some by that time are more affected by peer pressure. So the key in my opinion is to be honest with your child about drug use and its consequences.

Remember the drugs that are abused the most are in the medicine cabinet that you got from some person in a nice clean lab coat, behind a counter at your local pharmacy, and that any drug that is strong enough to help is also strong enough to hurt if misused or abused. Fess up if you have experimented or worse, Make it personal, make it real for them. And just maybe when that times comes where the opportunity to experiment or not with a substance happens – and it will – your kid has the best preparation that they could have at that moment and they make the right decision based on science, a strong nonjudgmental relationship with their parents or parent, and that they understand the consequences in their choice, as well as having no fear to call their parents if they have made a bad choice.

I would speak about the whole forbidden fruit concept and how now that 2 States have legalized Cannabis recreationally, Teen use has dropped in those 2 States and gone up in all the rest, but that’s a whole other letter.

Sincerely,

Mark A. Rose RPSGT, EEG