“Advocating for Youth: A Conversation with Julie Dreifaldt on Drug Prevention and Policy”

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Party Talk where we empower leaders in youth drug prevention. Happy Monday. I hope your week has started off amazing and you had an incredible weekend full of fun and friends and family. Today, I’m talking with Julie Dreifaldt. And check this out. She is the Community Liaison for one chance to grow up. She’s passionately and tirelessly advocating for kids and she equips parents to talk about today’s marijuana. Julie regularly educates policymakers, educators and trusted adults about the current problems with THC, the troubling, potencies deceptive products and needed protections for our nation’s children. Julie speaks nationally to parents, trusted adults, youth serving coalition partners and school organizations about today’s marijuana, the impact on kids, and how communities can generate actionable narratives to create change. She has a Bachelor of Arts in History and English from Mount Vernon Nazarene University. And you stay tuned, we’re going to give you all the ways you can connect with her and benefit from the great, great work that she’s doing with her whole team at one chance to grow up. So Julie, thank you so much for being on the show. How are you?

I’m great. How are you Jake?

I’m so excited that you’re here. Because when we met at Johnny’s ambassadors conference, I was blown away by your experience with advocacy. And I was like, I couldn’t believe that you said yes to being on my podcast.

I honored to be here. I think you’re doing such an amazing job of getting the message out of how important it is to get as many adults as possible to protect our kids. They need protected as as the name of our nonprofit, they had one chance to grow up. So they got one shot at this and we got to help them reach their full potential.

Yes, exactly. And what’s so, what I love about it is your students follow what you do now what you say. So if you’re a great advocate for your student, guess what your students going to be a great advocate for themselves for their friends. So you’re setting them up to do impactful work. And like you said, like, a parent’s job is to protect your kids. So you’re teaching us how to do that better. So here’s the plan. Julie, you have this incredible presentation for us. If you are listening in the car, here’s the thing, you you’ll want to listen. And then later if you want to rewatch this episode, go to our YouTube channel, because Julie has actually created visuals for us. So she’s going to take us through her best practices and the things that are really working and some case studies. And for those of you listening, you’re going to you’re going to be blown away by some tips for advocacy, and really talking to your legislators. Anything I missed Julie, just kind of set this up about what you’re taking us through.
That’s perfect. And I will try to explain each slide as best I can. So you on the radio are able to or you know, listen to it properly. Okay, awesome. I’ve just dated myself saying radios.

Right? I listen to the radio sometimes.

Well, thanks so much. I’ll jump in if you’re good with that. A little bit about me, Julie. I live in Colorado for about 24 years, which has kind of been the epicenter of marijuana legalization. Personally, I’m originally from Ohio. So go Buckeyes. And unfortunately, I’m a Cleveland Browns fan as well. But my husband and I, we have three kids. They’re 22, 20 and 18. So we know for a fact that education is vital in providing protections for our kids. We have two Great Danes and a giant Mastiff. So our life is crazy at my house. But I’m so excited to be talking to you today, Jake, and I’ll run through kind of what’s worked for one chance to grow up and me personally and professionally and we’ll go from there. So we’re deeply marijuana was legalized in Colorado in 2012. Via amendment 64. So Governor Hickenlooper was the governor at the time and he invited stakeholders including some of these moms, quote, to a taskforce to recommend policy on this new legalized market. So as the slide says that the health safety and well being of children, and the public was ranked dead last and ease over the consumer was ranked number one. So at that point, we decided that our mandate was set. We had to create a group, an organized nonprofit to really stand in the space to be a voice for kids. So we started out as one or as smart Colorado and we changed our name in 2020 because we are getting more and more states legalized, we are getting questions. I mean dozens of questions every week from different states on how do I now that it’s legal? How do we? How do we regulate this? So we have over 10,000 followers from every single state, we’re citizen led. We’re a very small nonprofit. We don’t take money from tax revenues, we’re able to say what we want and do what we want. We’ve been affected over 37 pieces of legislation. And I actually just was going through my closet finding some old stuff from 10 years ago, and the message is still the same. So our message has always been it’s been about kids, and the effects of THC on their brains and their bodies and their and their lives. So that’s who we are. This is a slide. And it’s a tough slide because this is why we do what we do. There’s Levi is, he died, he was an exchange student from the Congo in 2014. Because he had unmarked edibles, and had way too many servings and jumped off of a parking garage and Ethan Andrew, he had cannabis induced psychosis. Daniel Amant, had had the first lung transplant due to vaping injuries from nicotine in and THC, Sammy Brian and Randy all have passed away after having experienced cannabis induced psychosis and taking their own lives. And Morgan McCoy, she’s a cannabis, medical marijuana user herself, and she is educated her daughter on what marijuana looks like and doesn’t look like. And in Florida, it’s in a black and white package. It’s it’s not appealing to kids, but such a friend of hers came from California and had Hawaiian Tropic gummies. And her little daughter ingested them. And they had to be in the hospital for several days. And now she’s an advocate on making sure that marijuana for as medicine is looks like medicine and does not look like candy. Wow. Yeah, pretty powerful. I stalked her on Facebook, how it was so. And she reached out to me, and she’s been one of our community voices. And she had a quote, she said, What would you would you try to sell Clorox in Capri Sun packages. That’s what her analogy was. And I’ll never forget her telling me that because that was so powerful. Because that’s what some of our candies look like. And it’s it’s it’s toxic and dangerous. So

“Prioritizing Public Health: Challenges and Progress in Marijuana Regulation”

Oh my gosh. Okay, I want to before you do this, this part, I just want to highlight something that you said that really struck me is that the governor’s task force. So they brought together this task force, and one of their least priorities was protecting the health and well being of kids, and the community and public health. Yes. And public health. And that’s so that feels so backwards. Now, maybe we’ll talk about this later. But how does a task force even like, it seems like when that comes up, there should be a red flag, and everyone should know about it and say, Hey, we don’t mean a new task force or something, is how does that help?

Well because the task force, because but you have to remember, this was 12 years ago. So marijuana wasn’t anywhere. And it was. So it’s a whole new industry that they had to try to figure out. I mean, there was somebody in the on the task force that said biodegradable packaging was more important than child resistant packaging. Because I don’t think anyone really knew. I shouldn’t say that. I think that marijuana industry knew, but I don’t think anyone really knew the mass commercialization that was going to come out of this. People were thinking they were it was a decriminalization, and but yes, there is a great book, and I’ll share it later about how how, what taskforce and what regulators should have who they should have, they should have doctors involved. Every doctor should have been on this taskforce. I don’t think they weren’t. So great point. Great point. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. Yeah, but it because it was a new industry. I mean, innovation was the priority and then the tax structure and and how to easily serve the consumer. Okay. And I won’t go into a lot of detail on this slide, because there’s a lot on here. My point is, we’ve been involved in this for a long time. And what happened in Colorado and actually even even what’s happened in Denver on the local level, has really been best practice across the country. So the THC universal symbol, we got that on, we had to fight a whole session because the industry thought it was not right. But now that is across the country, on most of them. And then like they used to be able to spray products. There’s labeling and serving size and pregnancy warning. So we’ve done a lot of things that had become best practices across the country. So any question on that Jake, there’s there’s a lot on here.

I mean, if you could if you could dumb down because over the last 11 years you I can see this on right our YouTube people can see it is you’ve done a lot of projects, what are maybe your top three projects that you’re most proud of, or maybe we’ll go over that later too. But from here so you you got THC companies to label their packaging, which is so important. And you just pick out maybe one or two more that you’re like, This is what we’ve done. And this is what we’ve done to.

“Strategic Advocacy: Leveraging Data, Experts, and Storytelling for Impact”

Well, I think the universal symbol. And we decided that we did not want a marijuana leaf on it, we wanted the words THC, because from the very beginning, we had very smart co-founders, and they said it is about the THC. It’s really, in the confusion of as we’ve seen over the past 12 years, it’s no longer the plant philia you have people that you know, are using organic, you know, that creative plants. So I think that the pregnancy is fine was really huge, because right after we got this done, there was the Surgeon General came out and said there’s no safe amount of THC for the unborn and breastfeeding child. I think the symbol and then and I’ll go over later, and Bill 1317 was probably huge. It was a groundbreaking bill that made it was really the first push back on the marijuana industry in any any states going forward. But a lot of it, as you see is common sense. Like serving size, you know, a cookie should not have this big a cookie a size of a quarter should not have 10 servings in it, you shouldn’t have to tell a person to cut that in with 10 servings. So yeah. It’s just a lot. Yeah, a lot of serving size. I would say the pregnancy warning and then 13 17 and and the THC symbol. But we’ve done a lot of that, again, a lot of it is just common sense. Yeah. So I want to let you guys know, you know, like, where to find data. Data is not sexy. I am an English major. I love data. But really data is how you get stuff done. So there’s a list here of where to find some data. So we’ve worked with these agencies over the years to get data and to find out ironically, you know, it’s we’ve been around longer than some of these agencies, and we’ve outlasted a lot of regulators. So we often get called to say, hey, what’s the history lesson of the genesis of a rule or regulation? So there and I’ll quickly run through these for the podcasters. The Department of Human Services, most states have a child fatality report. Local excise and license is really important. Haida, which is a High Intensity Drug trafficking area, there are multiple regions, and is really good driving while intoxicated data in those reports. Industry, you know, revenue, what does that look like? Colorado is pretty transparent. We’ve got dashboards and a lot of information, an annual reports, youth surveys, most states do use surveys and you can find out you know what, what kind of drug use we’ve actually really push that hard. We’ve added multiple questions of marijuana because it used to be like Do do you use marijuana? And that was it. So now we’re like, well, when did you first start? How what product did you start using? I mean, have you just in the last 30 days. Have you driven when you’ve done high. So get information and getting that and working with agencies to get the information that will help you get the data you want is really important.

Okay, some of those that I wouldn’t have thought out that are on here, like the Department of Transportation, the local event permitting office, I wouldn’t have thought to go there either. And then I wouldn’t have thought to go on the like the industry forecasts and reports. Oh, what does it mean when you say local excise and license.

So that disaster runs our Denver local advising license. And I have a map that I did later, but they’re the ones that track in Colorado, and it’s hard because it’s not like it’s tracked by like, ours goes through Department of Revenue, like marijuana is handled through that, but different straights, those different organizations that manage it, so depends on data’s. So that’s really important. Find out who manages that. And then we have the Marijuana Enforcement Division, which we actually have a great relationship with, which we’re like, hey, this, this isn’t working, or hey, you know, I think this is not working. The permitting office was what we who we worked with work, we had a 420 that now kind of quickly cover that in our case study. And then really, we helped get policy change with some really strong academic and medical partnerships. So we work very closely with the child and adolescent psychiatric society, both from an educational standpoint, I often present with the doctor which makes me so happy because again, I’m like, yeah, he can know he or she can cover that so they really explain and lay out the mental health warnings and how it’s affect what what they’re seeing in the emergency rooms. We work with a lot of emergency room doctors. neonatologist Dr. Jeff Hanson is in the omae technologist in Denver and he helped us really he testified on the increases he was seeing and THC and these brand new babies that were being born. So that helped get the pregnancy warning done. So, you know, Polit you need stories you need data and then you need experts. So these are some great opportunities, pharmacologist toxicologist, we actually have done Capstone products with business schools about where where marijuana is in the city. And so there’s, there’s multiple opportunities, but really find your your pro champions in the medical and academic arenas. Okay, so you got your data, you’ve talked to your experts. Now you got to create a story that really is going to affect change. So here you go, so what do you do? We’ve told some very interesting stories. And a lot of this is on our website at one chance to grow up. But how so the industry in Colorado and across the country says, well, legalized states marijuana is not used is not really going up in kids. And that’s somewhat true in some states. However, it’s what they’re using. So they’re no longer just smoking a joint, they’re dabbing ultra potent pot or vaping, the high THC and in taking edibles, which is serious, was That’s the stuff that’s affecting the brain significantly.

Yeah. And, Julie, I want to, as I think I feel like right now we’re about to get into some really, really good, like examples that people could learn from, and then also duplicate what you’re doing. So I want to set the scene right here. Is this the part where you’re like, hey, if you’re in prevention, if you’re in schools, if you’re advocating for students, for mental health, you know, public health, whatever that would be, and you want to advocate, you know, talk to your legislators, you know, go to the Capitol, or learn how to vote, like, if this were this stuff that you are going to be telling us, we’ll help them do it. And then what’s the difference between you had said what lobbying gonna be like?

“From Visuals to Advocacy: Telling Compelling Stories for Change”

So I speak a lot, Jay to a lot of nonprofits or, you know, people that are coalition partners that are funded, they have grant funding, and it says they cannot lobby. I get this question all the time. Educating is not lobbying you i we only can lobby a small percent of our because of a bar restrictions as well. But we educate all day long. We talk to legislators, we talk to policymakers, when we talk to senators, we so it’s really important to make sure that you know if you can’t call in and say you must vote for HB 1329. But you can say you must protect kids and this is why and because you your your listeners are the experts. They know what is happening in the schools. And and with kids. So they, their testimony is imperative we have Yeah. So just so you know, blobbing is non educated, very different. And I mean, I get I’m not, I’m not your lawyer, so I would, I would make sure that check with your grant writing, but we do it all day long. Education is vital.

Okay, thanks for clarifying that.

So ways we’ve told the stories, some of them are pretty straightforward. Like a white paper, we have three white papers, op eds, either we write them or we find somebody that’s been harmed in the community or a doctor or an expert, media stories. That’s been really great. Because some kids want to get in front of the media, and we help orchestrate a relationship with them and the media and say, tell your story. On visuals, super empowering. We have postcards to legislators. So a lot of different things. And a lot of these are available for free on our website. So feel free to use them. If anyone out there wants to co brand with us, let us know. This was a super powerful narrative. So it’s a picture on a on a tray of all these different candies and cookies. And we walked around the committee room and 2014 after stores just open in Colorado, and it was legal for they’d buy it from Costco, and they would spray THC all over it. So we walked in. And it really was shocking for a lot of the legislators they were like, Oh my gosh. So that narrative helped us change our banned THC spray and also helped us remove kid friendly shapes and flavors, Ban flavors, kid friendly shapes, because you can’t have animals, you can’t have body parts. You can’t have anything in the shape of a fruit as well. And a lot of other states have gone on to do that too. And on the right, as you see, I mean so this is where Colorado started. We don’t want states to start back where we started. We want to start now where we are so Massachusetts legalized in the last couple of years. And as you see they do have a THC warning that’s not only on the package, but on the product as well. Super important on the cover, and kids. That’s the other thing that I think just like we wouldn’t I mean, I have three kids. And that was a long time ago, but I would educate them on what a stop sign looks like. And then when they were taking Driver’s Ed, like, make sure you know what all these signs look like, we need to educate our little kids, what a THC symbol looks like in your state. So they know not to, I mean, super simple. And, and, you know, it’s unfortunately, I mean, when I was my kids were younger, you’d ask people like, do you have guns in your house? Are they locked up? Like these are questions you just need to, you know, empower parents to ask before. Do you have marijuana and your house if you do as a locked up because accidental ingestions are up, you know, almost 14 100%. So we need to protect our kids and educate them a little kids get it?

And I think what’s cool about that, why you just showed us Is that who you have, that you brought these things into the room with your legislators, you weren’t just telling them, “Hey, trust us, there’s these gummies and these goldfish, they can be laced with vaping products, or THC or whatever it would be.” You’re showing them and they get to be wild because they’re like, I I would never know they have the experience instead of you telling them. And that’s just so important, like with you said of sharing a story and bringing visuals, it’s extra credibility and extra proof. And it probably helps you stand out from anything else that they hear that day. Yours, they’re gonna remember.

Well, and because one year we took, there was no differentiation in the early days of the one ounce of marijuana versus like, like blood plants, or one ounce of marijuana in dabs or the high THC. So we walked our little red wagon up to the Capitol steps with when Eddie goes over 2000 Girl Scout cookies because that was the equivalent of what one ounce of dabs would do, you know? And that’s it could be in 2000 cookies. So it was really interesting. So people, yeah, that was shocking. Even one I mean, even a very strong proponent of commercialization was like, Holy crap.

Yes. So you literally walk 2000 cookies into the room to show them.

And then we’re fine. But Right, exactly, letting them know that the amazing difference between so get like you said a story is important. I mean, with data with science, but having a visual of some sort is very powerful. This is another visual that we created that I think is personally very powerful. I’d love to see what every large legalized with a legalized market of marijuana looks every large city looks like because this is Denver. It’s called the Inverted L. So in Denver, the darker areas are the community’s most at risk. So we ask the Denver Office of Children’s affairs for the the list of the child well being so child well being is I think there’s like 14 factors, but it’s like child poverty, violent crime, kindergarten readiness, eighth, ninth grade absenteeism and so there’s multiple things. And then we asked this Denver excise and license just show us where all the dispensaries and the grow houses and the cultivation are. Well, as you can see, they’re in areas most at risk. So this tells this tells the story, there’s a huge difference between decriminalization, legalization and commercialization. We don’t want anyone in prison for marijuana use, or you know, possession, but you don’t want the kids of those same neighborhoods exposed to this outlet density. So it’s it’s it was a great story. I’ve shared this, even though it’s a Denver map, I’ve shared this nationally. And it’s been, it’s very powerful. So yeah.

So for those of you who listening to create that, you would find out the areas and get a map of your area. What what look like areas are at risk or most and then where those marijuana dispensaries and, and places are. Right. Okay.

And then and I’ve just talked to the company from the nicotine arena. And she said, I’m sure that if you overlay the same nap with with alcohol, and nicotine, and then also grocery stores, the lack of grocery stores, you would find the same thing. So wow, that anyone has funding for that. I think you should go figure that out, too. Because, right, we’re creating just a nightmare for our kids most at risk. And for parents too.

Yeah.

A little quickly. We’ve created billboards, which are kind of feel like old school, but they’ve been really successful. We just did a campaign. I spoke at North High School, which is pretty diverse Latino, High School in Denver, but a year ago and they said, Hey, we really would love a Spanish language billboard. And I was like, okay, so I brought that back to the team. We found some funding. We had four billboards in that corridor, we did a press conference. And it was very, very successful. So it was a back to school event and then we we co launched it with In a digital campaign English and Spanish and we hit over a million people so and a lot of these things like if you Google can you spot the pot? One chances are it was smart Colorado at that time, Billboard comes up. So that’s right after legalization. So some of those products is just like what we took to the Capitol. It’s the story. So some of those products were legal pot, and some of them were candy that we bought at the at the grocery store. So Wow. Going back to your point, like how can you tell a narrative if you if you know, if you don’t have 2000 cookies to walk into the Capitol? Well, this, this story started out in the dining room table. So on the left is the first little cookie it was it had 10 servings of THC. So 100 milligrams of THC was in that mini, basically Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, because there was no pre approved pre approved process for products and multi serving animals. And how did this so we took these pictures, we took them to the Capitol, my colleague, Rachel showed them to some regulators, they didn’t believe her, they thought we were lying, which was hilarious. And then they’re like, Wait, so we showed the packaging, we showed the whole product. And then the head of Marijuana Enforcement called her at a soccer game Saturday morning when she was at her son’s soccer game we’d like and we need to do emergency rulemaking so that you gotta get the right person, you gotta get the champion, and you got to really have them understand what’s going on. 

Hey, wow. So who did you go to that was able to make that decision.

“Advocacy Strategies and Successes in Marijuana Policy Reform”

Like it was part of the Marijuana Enforcement Division as well. We showed regulator and then I think the regulator reached out to them and then we reached out, we’ve like, this needs to be fixed. There was also that boy that from the Congo, that died around that same time, and then there was a father, who ate a whole edible because there was no serving size on that. And he shot his wife and son of his two kids. So those horrible stories also, unfortunately, changed the game too. Yeah. So one thing is to grow up. This is make some people super uncomfortable, but we shopped the market. We take pictures, so you don’t have to. So the products in the grain were what I purchased recently in Colorado, and the products on top were purchased in Oregon. So they’re cocoa Kana Krispies. And that had a hang tag, I used to be in retail, so it had to have like a stapled hang tag, there was no it’s something that a two year old could have ripped apart. There was spot on edge, there was Samoa Girl Scout Cookie vapes. There was all kinds of products out there the other ones down below these make me a little angry because you know, if you prove something if I say something, I have to prove it with some science. And these made I mean they said you got to be sexier you’re gonna be happier you smarter love bliss genius, and they infer that this this will help you in those arenas, and it’s false advertising and this false health claims. So yeah. So I want to make sure your listeners know about THC photos. It’s a great resource. THC photos.org rate resource there’s I think, wealth states we have up there we’re getting some hemp pictures up there soon. People need to know people it’s so confusing even for you and I who have been in this space for a long time. I mean, is there a difference between adult use or medical or THC and CBD and now have been, you know, milligrams and ounces and it’s all it’s all so much so we’ve hopefully laid it out. It’s a great place for parents to see what kind of stuff is on there. If you look above there was a blaze soda which I think was shocking. I bought it and I my poor family every time we go on vacation. They’re like Mom, are you gonna do another dispensary? I’m like, Yes. Yeah.

You’re on a mission.

Yes. And then I you know, don’t I don’t travel with it. It stays where it was. But the blaze I mean that little soda and it was probably I mean like a size of a venti Coke or venti Starbucks drink Yeah 10 servings in it, which is pretty easy because no one sits and drinks a little bit of soda they mean 10 ounces or whatever announced at a time so.

Yeah, so thcphotos.org. You can see what the products, the popular products are selling right now. So they you’re aware

Yeah and you can download them for free there. They’re there you can use them for for media. We just had the nurse reach out in Boulder that said she wanted to use them so yeah, they’re used for us in Hawaii, New Zealand. I saw an l LGBT group used them and New York City. So yeah, please feel free to use them in any way. You can just make sure you credit one chance if you could. That’s great. So I know you and I had talked briefly about this but hemp hemp is crazy. So hemp was legalized. I’m not going to get into all the semantics because the Again, English major not accounted for. It’s legal in all 50 states because of the 2018 Farm Bill. We are working with us and many other organizations are working to try to close some of the loopholes in the Farm Bill. So this is products are no longer available. Some of these products are sold at gas stations not in Colorado, but in in Texas, Oklahoma. They’re sold at gas stations, you can be 18. Some of them have no age verification. Some of them are 21. I did some shopping. And those are my comments on there. I mean, one person said they had to be teen one person said no, you can be 21 Once it oh yeah, your daughter can come in, one of the cookies had 500 milligrams, another vape had had almost 3000 milligrams of a THC. Soon as they the chemists don’t even know what some of this is. It’s they’re just creating new derivatives of Delta 8, and delta 9. And they’re still legal because of the way the farm bill is written. And there’s no oversight. It’s it’s just an all of this is intoxicating. The product on the bottom that looks like a cigarette. I peeled off the price. And I found out it was two years expired. And it came from Europe, like it was just like, so it was just who knows.

They’ll sell anything. It’s like, wow,

It’s crazy. And then there’s the there’s Pop Rocks, if you some of you remember that there’s the the THC pop rocks up kind of pop around in your mouth. And those were all that were intoxicating. And here’s my daughter on the on the left, she was 17. At the time, I’m sorry, on the right, I purchased some items online and I sent she went to go to the mailbox. And that’s what came in. And I was like holy crap, that was such an eye opening moment. So she, I thought it was a package from Amazon. And it was from the product I ordered. So again, no age verification, a 12 year old could get this online and get a lot of people very high very quickly. We have some tools for your gear, audience members and your team members. We have marijuana freeze owners and initiative, their stickers, it’s a really positive way to say I work with multiple schools and Boys and Girls Club on that. So because marijuana we all know that schools are drug free, Jake, but marijuana is kind of this weird spot because it’s legal. And it’s, you know, sold as medicine. So we just want to make sure that people know that this is a safe space. We have multiple newsletters Community Voices was I think when you tried to get Jake on one of ours oops, multiple Spanish language resources. So please sign up and take a look at everything we have. And it’s yours for the taking. So really quickly, Jake, do we have time to go over the heads? Yeah, yeah, please. So I want to quickly say how we’ve done things, and I want to encourage your listeners like this can be done. So we’re 20. I’m sure all of you know what 420 is. But it’s now in the Oxford Dictionary. Yay. As the 20th day of the fourth month, or the time 420 when references a day of cannabis consumption or the celebration of marijuana culture. So before legalization at Denver for 20 was a big deal. But it was a First Amendment and now I used to be on trade shows Jake and it’s like a big trade show. I mean, there’s swag, there’s marketing, there’s bands, it’s super entertaining. So most states, I’m sorry, most cities have 420 to be a 21 plus event 21 age plus. Denver didn’t so we’re like okay, so we’ve we’ve worked with the edge or the the promoters over the years. They discouraged it, but they never made any.

Like policy or enforcement.

So we’re like, okay, so we got a little irritated. So we thought, okay, we have DBS. Denver Public Schools is the largest school district in the state. Here, Colorado. We’re like, “hey, we want to know the if 420 falls on a school day.” What is your tech and summers look like? Drop in 42%. Especially more when it was on a Thursday or Friday? Yeah, so significant. So we have our data. Our story became kids skip school at 420. And also little kids were there. And we knew that because we attend 420 just to see what what it looks like. So some shocking pictures. These kids are not in. They’re not 21 Plus, so you can see they’re probably middle school and high schoolers. There’s a baby stroller there. There’s multiple baby strollers. It’s hard to see and especially in this picture on the right, you can see this this there’s a plume of smoke around these kids, you know. So we got the data. We had a press conference at 52 at high school, which is one of Colorado’s only said substance use recovery high schools. So we had a peer counselor and one of the students that was hissed off, can I say that? They were Yeah. They were mad that this was happening. And they felt they were really preying on kids. So they spoke to the media. And in three weeks, I mean, this literally happened, what we just realized we’re tired of this. So as you can see, we had, we made a huge impact. In three weeks, we got a petition signed, we had 15,000 people reach out on social, we got three TV stations covering it and the outcome. Well, the event organizers agreed to 21 plus in in perpetuity. So we let him share and there were their age checks every every entrance point. So that’s great. I mean, so super grassroots. It really was not just us it was it was also just getting the information out to parents and then putting up a state because the city was saying they were doing it and the promoters were saying they’re doing it, we’re like we don’t care what just let’s fix it. So yeah. And we didn’t blame DPS on this. We just use their data to help create the narrative. Yeah. This is a narrative that pretty much wrote itself. There was a study of dispensaries in Colorado, that was conducted by CU School of Medicine. So they interviewed 400 cannabis dispensaries, and nearly 70% of them recommended cannabis products to treat nausea in the first semester. So again, as you heard, I like Starbucks, I’m here with my Starbucks, that like me going to Starbucks this morning and the drive thru line and say, “Hey, Sarah, I have a slip disc, like, what do you recommend?” So these people are retail, they have nominal training and no medical training. So we were like, This is ridiculous. So we had the information from CU School of Medicine. So we decided the academia kind of needed to move on to the next question. So we took the baton, and we’re like, hey, we’ll make this policy change. So, um, and this had tried have been done a couple of times. So I think three or four years before that, so we were super happy. So we would have had a gotcha approach and waited until the deadline for January 1 For all these signs to be in every dispensary. But we’re like, that’s not how we roll. We wanted to help protect kids. So we sent out 1200 signs, they didn’t look quite like this. They were not self promoting. They didn’t have our logo on it at all. But we mailed was a letter explaining the law change to every dispensary. And about a third of the dispensaries were like, Yeah, well, we want more. That’s great. So I mean, we helped promote that. And then always we want to find out what what was the result? So the result was we moved the needle, so 8.2% of women in 2019. Use marijuana and then 6.8 and 2020. And that’s, that’s from the pregnancy risk assessment monitoring system. So great. I mean, we move the needle.

Yeah, that’s so good. Oh, oh, my wife probably lunch. Thanks. Oh, my, oh, it’s so nice.

Would you get?

Oh, Chick fil A. Oh, that’s. This episode’s sponsored by.

So the second issue that we did is, and this one’s a little more complicated. So if any of your listeners have any questions on this, I’m more than happy to help. But this this, you asked me what we were most proud of this is one of the things that really changed things here in Colorado. So Colorado real fast, again, you need a little background. We have medical marijuana with no age restrictions. So a two year old can get medical marijuana if was with parental approval. But as soon as you hit 18, HIPAA kicks in, and an 18 year old can get a medical marijuana card with no parental response. So we were Hey, we’re talking to as school resource officers that are police officers in the schools. And they were telling us they were they were confiscated marijuana from students was in Medical Packaging. So that was like, okay, so that was anecdotal. But we were hearing this, and then we knew that, but So how was that marijuana getting into the high schools? So we pulled data from the behavioral risk factor surveillance system, so that’s part of our health department. So we and we looked at the marijuana licenses. So it really was between 250 to 350 of kids under the age of 17 every year, so a very small group had medical marijuana cards. And all of a sudden you can see it goes up 70 times when these kids hit 18. So we know that they’re not developing Parkinson’s or glaucoma or cancer, I mean, we know that and and that we also know that the pain so under 17 was autism and then a Between 19 and 20, it was pain which I have a personal problem with because pain is a symptom, not a disease. Yeah. So we’re like okay, now we ever data. So what do we do? So we decided were we to put a bill together with a democratic pack. And then a couple other parents and polos and coalition partners. So we got 50 coalition partners, which is great. We got children’s hospitals, huge if you can get Children’s Hospital between any kind of your advocacy or any kind of work huge same with United Way Boys and Girls Club, big sister, big brother. Really important. We met with almost all the Colorado legislators. I gave so many presentations, I was exhausted. I thought it was PB NS to testify. I was actually at the Capitol, I was one of the last ones to do it at midnight or 12:15. And forget my my testimony. I was sitting next to a 17 year old and he told these senators, he said I could be out here. I could leave here in five minutes and get pot some anyone I want very, very cheap. And I’ll never forget that. And they they listened you know, they listen to kids. So the data was pretty damning. So here we are. There’s a great picture of made for you people that are on it can’t see it. This picture was in People magazine with a Laura and John Stack. And then several other champions that we’ve talked with and and it was signed unanimously in the house and overwhelmingly passed in this I’m sorry, unanimously in the Senate and through the house, and it was passed into law. Yeah, no, no, what was big generally really was, was and like I said, it’s really important because we had a we have a very pro, marijuana industry governor. And but because of our coalition partners, and the people standing there, he had to sign it. I mean, because when you have Nami and you know, Academy of Pediatricians signed up, it’s your coalition partners. It takes some work, but if you have a great reputation, and relationships, you’ll get the work done. So this picture was a People Magazine and my yellow pants on the far left made it into People Magazine.

Yeah. That’s awesome.

Okay, here we are, at what results, huge results. And I won’t go on all the details, but we made it harder. And we made marijuana, medical marijuana be treated more like marijuana. So now you had to have two doctors to sign in different locations, it had to be an in person, a diagnosis. There was a six month follow up. There was real time tracking. The educational resource, which I’ll go over later was great. So what happened? This number is actually almost up to 72. So decrease in number of patients 1819 and 2007 82%. Decrease. That’s huge. That’s so huge. It’s huge. So now it’s been done. Medical marijuana is being treated more like medicine here in Colorado. It should be in a dispenser or a pharmacy. But that’s that’s for next time. Yeah. Wow. And some of the things we reported like we always said we the data. So in this, the unsexy part of this bill is some of the reports that we asked for. So we got mandated toxicology for unnatural deaths under 25. Health Department tracking marijuana related hospital intakes and, and I unfortunately, we just got new data but THD number one substance found and completed suicides here in Colorado, in the 18 to 19 year olds. So that’s huge. So we need to find out why and where we also, there’s still bad actors in the space. They’re still here it says 3% are responsible for over 55% of the prescriptions and I the new data. I don’t have it in here, but this is similar to that. So so but that’s data that will help hopefully orchestrate new change. Here is for though, so we the state mandated warnings that was part of this bill that had to be given out to all people to buy concentrates. So here they are, they’re serious mental health symptoms. Cannabinoid cannabinoid hyperemesis, which is uncontrolled vomiting, cannabis use disorder, and psychosis and mental health, like those are significant warnings. And I think I posted these warnings. I follow a group on Facebook called grass cannon. They had chs. And they feel like I never would have started smoking pot. If I had known that this it could lead to this vomiting. So people, not just kids, but educate our consumers need to be educated to on what’s out there. Yeah, really fast. Why do we need we need to act now? You know why? Because our kids our lives are at stake. And this slide came to me recently is the first time somebody use alcohol. It’s 16 and a half years old, they don’t become regular users still there. 19. The first time a kid uses cannabis they become pretty regular users within too little less than two and a half months. Wow. So that’s serious. So we have a shorter period of prevention for cannabis and marijuana. We really do. So that’s, that shows you how addictive some of these products are.

Yeah, and how important it is to educate early about it. Because there’s a lot of marketing going into making the education seem like, Oh, this is healthy, it’s natural. It’s safe. It’s medicine, all that stuff.

Yep. There was a huge study that just came out. We work with a doctor in Canada. He testified for us on a few things. Dr. Daniel Myron. And he just said there’s he did a whole thing on anxiety and how it’s especially in an young man, if you’re hospitalized for using cannabis, you have a much higher likelihood to get hospitalized for anxiety disorders. So yeah. Here’s some resources, I won’t go through them all. But for your listeners online, like just there’s resources, we have sample messaging, we have petitions, targeted actions, zip code, a specific blasts, a lot of Parent Resources and policy resources, we try to put up all the recent data. And yeah, this is kind of iffy. If all of you fall asleep while speaking this is like, alright, this is our secret sauce. And this kind of helped us make we really thought it out how did we get change done, and other organizations to and transparency and data, educate, empower your champions and empower the citizens. And that policy change happens, but you have to enforce policy change. I mean, like I said, we tried to get th we got the THC symbol, one session, and then we had to fight a whole another session to keep it in place. So an encouragement a lot of it is local, local voice, local voice, success is an iceberg. You get stuff on, on top change, but then you can see down below, you need to be resilient, and you need to have courage. I applaud anyone that shares their story, or shares their data because it and I think the tide is in our favor, because there’s more and more data and science. This this is I feel like this is a story of one chance to grow up. We’ve been at this for for 12 years. And we’ve heard it all we’ve seen it all we’ve been called all kinds of names, there is some death threats, not on my job, phone calls, lies, ignored requests, but Reefer Madness days are over. And the science and data are now prevailing. So the narrative is about protecting our kids, period. So find your champions. And like you, Jake, you’re a champion for our kids. And let’s all you know, protect them. So there you go.

“Building Community: Together We Can Make a Difference”

All right, Julie. Well, first of all, thank you so so much. I’m you know, I know our listeners are they’re involved in coalition’s they’re involved in schools, sometimes they’re prevention specialists that are, you know, contracted to help youth and some of the things that we do, it’s, you know, it’s youth presentations, it’s education, it’s data. And advocacy is one of those really important things that can last, and it becomes part of our structure that makes things safer. I don’t think you can put a price on it. So I would encourage anyone who’s listening, just go to onechancetogrow.org Check out all their resources. And if you have questions, Julie is so generous, she’s so helpful. And, Julie, you have worked with people in other states, right? Like if they want you to help and support their policies and advocacy, can they work with you and get your help?

Absolutely. My only caveat to that is you need to have your your coalition needs to be local. We tried to do this in South Dakota. And it it was a colossal I mean, we we thought it was going to work, but no one wanted to hear it because they’re like, Oh, you’re in Colorado, we’re gonna do it much better than you. So you and unfortunately, part of it is they didn’t have the kids that had been harmed. So but they also didn’t have a coalition. And so you just if you have your local support, and people that care, we’re all in. And we’ll be behind the scenes and help you with testimony and help. Help, you know, orchestrate that and media. So yeah, we care deeply about this. And we want to, we’re all in this together. That’s good. I usually have onechancetogrowupthat.org. So please, email me and email me when things go well or when things go crappy. But just let me know how things are going.

Oh, that’s fantastic. Well, for everyone listening to the party type podcast this week. Keep up the amazing work that you’re doing. It is changing lives, you are seeing results. And if you need help reach out to Julie, julietonechancetogrowup.org And check out their website onechancetogrowup.org. And of course, I want you in this field as long as possible. And I know we can’t do it alone. So you know build that community around you, get those stakeholders and if you need help Just reach out. We’ll do so much more together than we could ever do alone. And we’ll see you next Monday for another episode of the Party Talk Podcast where we empower leaders in youth drug prevention.