Barbara Lawlor, Nederland. Almost 150 people gathered in the Nederland Community Center Auditorium last Wednesday night to hear educator/comedian Ray Lozano speak about the myths and facts around marijuana.

Sponsored by the Nederland Middle Senior High School Parent Engagement Network, Peak to Peak Prevention Coalition, Nederland Elementary School PTA, and TEENS, Inc., the event ended a long day for speaker Lozano who led three assemblies at schools before speaking to the community on Wednesday night.

Lozano travels across America, on the road at least 200 days a year, speaking to students all over the country, providing tools and information to help them make healthy choices. He lives in Los Angeles and is a drug/alcohol counselor who works with school district and law enforcement. Although he grew up in a family of drug and alcohol abusers, he has always been a non-user, even though peer pressure was constant.

He lists the reasons he believes that marijuana users cite in defending its use. "It's natural. No one has ever died. God gave it to us. Makes bad movies funny. It's relaxing and creative."

Marijuana has been found to exist 1.8 million years ago, buried in mummies in the pyramids. Lozano says the Roman culture was built on the back of hemp sails, ropes, battle clothing and bowstrings.

"But this is not the presentation you came for," said Lozano and went on to describe how marijuana is a social plant, that if attacked, it will send out pheromones and the leaves will change its flavor to protect itself in eight days.

He believes that "One joint has 488 chemicals that form new elements when they are lit, making 2000 different chemicals. The THC that users look for are natural pesticides, and they manipulate themselves according to their needs."

Pantomiming a large draw on a joint, Lozano said that from first puff, the chemical “that can paralyze bugs” goes from the lungs to the brain in five seconds. The THC “jumps on the layers of fat” where it lasts for 20 days.

According to his theory of child development, when a child is four years old, his intellectual part of the brain is smaller than his emotional part of the brain. This is reversed when the child becomes older.  "When you smoke weed, the chemical takes the brain from the intellectual to the emotional," he states.

According to Lozano, the I/E switch accounts for the high. He thinks it also accounts for the need to be constantly listening to something. There is a need for information to be coming in, he thinks. The user doesn't know what to do with silence. “They don't know how to have quiet times,” he says of users.

Lozano says he has asked his probation kids to be quiet for three seconds and many of them are uncomfortable in their skins; their emotions are moving through their brain really fast.

As data comes in, the brain sorts the information into boxes. His theory is that when someone smokes marijuana, the weed cancels information and the brain loses the ability to know what's important and what's not. "It absorbs so much information that it becomes paralyzed." Information gets stuck behind random doors, he says.

He believes that people who are stoned stare at television while the THC “goofs around in their brain for 15 days.” When a student smokes weed and studies, the brain can't find the right door to the information that is stored. And sometimes when it finds the door, strange things are behind it. Lozano says that weed opens the wrong doors and information is categorized in the wrong places. The information is still there, but the user doesn't know where it is.

There are three main reasons, he says, for kids to use marijuana: peer pressure, curiosity, and boredom. The 14-16 year old teens don't know how to deal with boredom and when the brain tries to figure it out, it needs things like work, reading, phones, exercise, mall trips; the brain learns through social and sensory interaction and time management, figuring stuff out. The brain is starving to learn, to suck in data.

But when a teen is bored, when he or she has chosen to smoke weed rather than do something, the brain is not working. The teen chooses to do nothing and loses what Lozano calls “his self-soothing strengths.”

"That is when they become unable to care for themselves, to lose the ability to interact and in doing so they choose to hang out with other weed smokers, because they can only hang out with other users," he believes.

One of the big myths, says Lozano, is that no one dies from smoking marijuana, that it is natural, the smoke is different than commercial tobacco. That doesn't take into account, he says, that the user takes deeper drags of smoke into their lungs and holds it for a longer time.

In the Woodstock days, 1969, marijuana contained five to eight percent THC. Now the percentage has jumped to 18 percent. Lozano believes that one joint can do as much lung damage as a pack of cigarettes. [Editor’s note: There is no recorded evidence of this.] There is no way of telling the number of heart-disease related deaths due to increase in blood pressure, the fast push through the blood, especially in the 47-58 year olds who grew up smoking marijuana.

"People are dying from weed, Lozano says. "They just aren't writing it down."

How do you get kids to stay away from marijuana, to stop using?

Lozano advises parents to stop lecturing and ask questions, to use educational moments, such as discussing the homeless person asking for money. How did he get there?

He suggested that kids can straighten out a fuzzy marijuana-infused brain by reading. Reading is the cure.

Two of the his prevention messages of the night were: "Peer pressure alone doesn't determine drug use. When teens hear their parents disapproving of drug use and discussing the harmful effects of drugs, they are six times likely to refrain from use.

"If teens perceive that "everybody is doing it," they are more likely to use drugs. When the image of a community and their peer group is accurately conveyed as ‘the majority don't use,’ youth are far less likely to imbibe."

Parents and community directly influence youth drug use.

As Lozano ended his presentation, a four-member community panel addressed the audience. Stephen LeFaiver, executive director of TEENS, Inc. said that everyday use of marijuana is a serious concern, that one student claimed that he can't eat if he doesn't smoke and he isn't sleeping and is depressed.

Nederland Middle Senior High School and TEENS, Inc. board member Greg Cuervara said, "Regular marijuana users have an impact on our student body. They can't concentrate, which affects the learning ability of students around them."

Peak to Peak Counseling psychotherapist Amy Hartman says she has worked with many area families who are trying to figured out how to parent in these times. "Families are curious, looking for help. Some kids have been introduced to marijuana at an early age and some have never seen it."

Nederland Police Department Police Chief Paul Carrill has another viewpoint on the subject. "I'm the cop of the bunch," he said. "My position is what the law says. I used to be on a drug force and I saw kids grow into drug users. Here in Colorado it still illegal for kids to possess and consume marijuana."

This is all about youth health, said NMSHS principal Adam Fels. "There is no morality or judgment here. We just want the kids to make healthy choices. It is important to keep in touch with your child's changing friendships. A teenage brain, 12-22,  is like a schizophrenic adult. Why take the risk?"