Jim Dunny
(If you have any comments or questions, please contact the editor)
Program for Tuesday, October 21, 2014
There will be no speaker for this meeting. Instead President Karen will hold a club assembly. NOTE: This meeting is at Belmont Village in Sabre Springs. Click here for the map.
Meeting Assignments
Date
Who Am I
Cheering for Rotary
October 21, 2014
Rick Coburn
Dan Krall
October 28, 2014
Bob Davie
Inan Linton
The assignment for the Who Am I includes providing the positive thought at the beginning of the meeting and introducing guests and visiting Rotarians during the meeting.
Cheering for Rotary assignment includes selling opportunity drawing tickets.
On World Polio Day 24 October, Rotary will be hosting a live-streamed event including an update on our fight to end polio. Here are some links to polio-related resources and recent media articles.
No child anywhere in the world should have to suffer from this completely preventable disease. It only costs US 60 cents to protect a child against polio for life. We need your voice to cross the finish line in the fight to end polio.
For more on this story and links to recent articles about polio eradication, click here
Dr. Joseph Perrone is the chief science officer at the Center for Accountability in Science, a project of the nonprofit Center for Organizational Research and Education, which is supported by businesses and foundations, including those in the hospitality, agriculture, and energy industries.
Already, 23 states allow marijuana to be prescribed for medicinal use, making it easy for proponents for broader legalization, such as the Marijuana Policy Project, to brand the drug as “harmless.” Some go further, calling it “safe” and even “healthy.” The result is that voters in Oregon and Alaska — in addition to D.C. — may soon join Colorado and Washington as the first states to fully legalize recreational pot for adults.
The problem is that marijuana is not, in fact, “harmless.” Proponents are spinning the science — casting pot as a threat only if used improperly, much like a car — for the sake of advancing their political agenda. It’s fine for people to believe the government has no business conducting a “war on drugs,” but it’s something else entirely to trivialize or simply deny marijuana’s harmful effects. These dangers are real, according to a recently released comprehensive review of 20 years of scientific literature from Wayne Hall, who advises the World Health Organization on addiction and runs the University of Queensland’s Center for Youth Substance Abuse Research. And the dangers need to be dealt with.
The role of government in regulating drugs can’t be separated from what those drugs do to people. On that question, pot-libertarians have taken too many liberties — about both its medical and its recreational effects.
Proponents claim marijuana can slow or stop damage caused by glaucoma (by lowering eye pressure), but as Henry D. Jampel, professor of ophthalmology at Johns Hopkins, points out, marijuana could actually worsen the vision loss caused by glaucoma. “Although marijuana does lower the eye pressure, it also lowers blood pressure,” he notes. “Lower blood pressure could result in reduced blood supply to the optic nerve, which in turn might harm the optic nerve.”
Beyond the medical applications, legalization proponents argue that marijuana should be available for recreational use because it’s “harmless” and not addictive. But the active ingredient in marijuana, THC, is a powerful psychoactive ingredient that can cause hallucinations or delusions and interfere with the way the brain makes and stores memories. Hall’s study found that marijuana use doubles the risk of developing psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia. He also found that one in 10 adults who regularly smoke the drug become dependent on it, and those who use it are more likely to go on to use harder drugs.
His study also emphasizes the danger that marijuana use poses to teens — one in six teenagers who regularly smoke pot will become dependent. Other research backs up these warnings: A recent review of more than 120 studies found that teen marijuana use is associated with subsequent addiction to other drugs and psychosis, such as schizophrenia. And a recent study from researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee linked regular marijuana use by teens to drops in IQ points and to memory problems.
While the states that have legalized marijuana completely have done so only for residents 21 and older, peer-reviewed research has linked heavy marijuana use with long-term memory problems and other health effects in adults. Marijuana also poses dangers to pregnant women, with studies linking the drug to lower birth weight, impaired brain development and behavior problems in adolescents.
And while proponents of legalization point out that it’s impossible to overdose on cannabis, that doesn’t mean there aren’t any instances of marijuana-related deaths. A handful of deaths in Denver were tied to edible marijuana use this year, not to mention the increased risk of fatal car accidents due to drivers impaired by marijuana. Hall’s study analyzed epidemiological studies and laboratory evidence from a number of researchers and concluded that driving after smoking pot approximately doubles the risk of a car crash.
Because marijuana has been illegal for decades, intensive studies are lacking and there are still many questions surrounding the safety of marijuana. Hall’s report is a meta-analysis of available research on marijuana, but much of the work on marijuana’s effects has focused on heavy, long-term users or vulnerable populations, including teenagers and pregnant women. We need more research on the effect of marijuana on casual users.
As more states move to legalize marijuana, polls indicate that Americans are growing much more accepting of marijuana use. But the growing acceptance and availability of pot, along with the misleading advertisements spread by legalization proponents, are spreading the dangerous myth that marijuana is risk-free. There are compelling reasons to change our policy toward marijuana — notably, cutting down on incarceration rates for possession. But simply ignoring the science on the negative effects of chronic (no pun intended) marijuana use does a disservice to the dialogue around marijuana.
Mourner prays at the memorial for students and teachers of the Elementary School of Okawa in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, 11 September 2011.
Photo Credit: Rotary International/Alyce Henson
More than three years after an earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster triggered widespread devastation in Japan, the physical scars are beginning to mend. Debris has been removed. Coastal communities are being rebuilt. Farming and fishing have resumed, and thousands of people have moved in to new housing.
But the Rotary Clubs of Koriyama West, Japan, and Englewood, New Jersey, USA, are concerned with the emotional and psychological impact caused by the triple disaster, known in Japan as 3/11, which claimed more than 19,000 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
In a country that prides itself on stoicism, it is difficult for survivors to seek and accept mental health care. "We believe that the first step to overcome the grief is to be able to talk about what they're going through and share their personal experiences," says Englewood club member Ikuyo Yanagisawa.
With a Rotary global grant, the clubs purchased mobile video conference equipment for four mental health clinics in areas most affected by the Fukushima nuclear power plant crisis. These tools now connect mental health care providers in Japan with trauma experts at the Arnhold Global Health Institute in New York City, where psychologists treated survivors and witnesses of the September 11 attacks.
To augment the new resources, Koriyama West members will organize multidisciplinary mental health care teams from Fukushima Medical University to make outreach visits to temporary shelters and schools in and around Tohoku, a town near Fukushima. Additionally, survivors of 3/11 will be able to talk via video conference to 9/11 family members and first responders who lost loved ones and colleagues in the tragedy.
"Despite the differences between 9/11 and 3/11, survivors of both events share a similar healing process by overcoming the shock, grief, and isolation," adds Yanagisawa. Last November, the Englewood club teamed up with Japanese Medical Society of America and American Airlines to fly five members of the September 11th Families Association to Tohoku to share their stories and give encouragement to 3/11 survivors still displaced by the tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster.
"The 9/11 members would open each conversation with the Japanese expression otagaisama which means 'we are all in the same boat,'" says Yanagisawa, who accompanied the team. "This helped 3/11 members open up more and feel at ease with sharing their story. I could see how deeply connected the two groups were. It was remarkable to see."
Yanagisawa says that 3/11 survivors came to her after group sessions to say how encouraged they were to move forward with their lives.
"This is our [the two participating clubs] goal: to help communities in Japan overcome their grief and find the strength to rebuild their lives," she says. "Bringing together survivors from two different disasters, from opposite ends of the world, we hope will bring about a sense of international community."
