In the year 2000, Colorado voters decided to make medical use of marijuana legal for patients suffering with certain conditions. Since then, there has been an explosion of shops, called dispensaries, from which patients can buy their ‘prescription’ marijuana. What is proving most troubling is that an alarming number of these dispensaries are housed within eyeshot of Colorado’s public and private schools. Recent news reporting has shown that there is a clear connection between the proximity of marijuana dispensaries to school children and an increase in the number of drug violations among school-aged kids.

Colorado schools (K-12) have experienced a greater than 45 percent increase in the number of drug violations in just four years. A news investigative team spoke to students who said that for them, it is easier to obtain marijuana than alcohol. These same kids said that they believed smoking marijuana helped them to focus on their difficult school subjects and did not believe that their use of marijuana would in any way impede their post-high school progress; youthful sentiments which are definitively countermanded by the facts.

The school students said they not only preferred smoking marijuana to drinking alcohol, but they expressed a clear preference for marijuana obtained from the medical marijuana dispensaries. The kids said that the drug from dispensaries had a better smell and was far more potent. One student boasted about receiving daily rations of marijuana headed for the shop’s garbage from a relative who works in a dispensary. Those outside of Colorado may be surprised to learn that many such dispensaries exist well within 1,000 feet of Colorado’s schools.

The correlation between nearby dispensaries and rising drug violations is indisputable. A few statistics pertaining to drug violations at Colorado schools show the reality:

• Drug-related suspensions were up by 45 percent in 2007-2008 and 2010-2011
• Drug-related expulsions were up by 35 percent
• Referrals to police were up by 17 percent
• Police referrals from Denver schools were up by 71 percent

The marijuana problem was so bad in Denver schools that in 2010 police started to list marijuana arrests at the city’s schools in their own category. Here’s what they found: there were 179 marijuana arrests made in 43 Denver K-8 public schools August 2010-June 2011. Notice, those arrests occurred in K-8! Denver is not alone in this problem. Suburban schools have also been surrounded by marijuana dispensaries and have also seen alarming increases in arrests for possession and sale of the drug.

These marijuana-related violations are sharply increasing at the same time that other school problems are decreasing. The number of every other manner of school violation combined has gone down by 11 percent and police referrals and expulsions not connected to marijuana have dropped by 25 percent. Educators and school administrators were begging for help to remove the source of student problems. Help came in the form of Federal prosecutors. In January 2012, Federal agents warned an initial 23 dispensaries that they had 45 days (until February 27, 2012) to move away from school areas or face criminal prosecution. The prosecutors say they have another 100 plus dispensaries in their sights who are currently within 1,000 feet of school property.