Lewiston’s School Committee has voted to oppose an upcoming marijuana legalization vote in the city, saying it could lead to more drug use by teens.

“(Marijuana) is already pervasive. We don’t think we need to make it available at every mom-and-pop convenience store,” Lewiston School Committee Chairman James Handy said Tuesday. Lewiston’s superintendent said school officials are having to discipline more students for bringing marijuana to city schools.

The committee adopted the resolution Monday, six weeks before Nov. 4 referendums in Lewiston and South Portland on whether it should be legal in those cities for adults to possess small amounts of marijuana for recreational use. The committee’s stand is similar to a vote in July by the South Portland City Council encouraging voters to reject marijuana legalization.

Legalization advocates also have been trying to get the question on the ballot in York, but a judge last week backed the town’s argument that the referendum is not lawful because marijuana is illegal under state and federal law and the drug cannot simply be made legal at the town level. The Marijuana Policy Project, which proposed the ordinances in all three communities, was still considering Tuesday whether to appeal the court’s ruling.

The stands by Lewiston’s school board, South Portland’s City Council and York’s Board of Selectmen show that the legalization movement is facing widening opposition as it moves beyond Portland toward a potential statewide referendum in 2016.

Portland voters overwhelmingly approved a similar legalization ordinance in 2013 after a one-sided campaign that featured no organized opposition, including by the city’s elected officials. That vote made Portland the first city on the East Coast to declare it legal for adults to use small amounts of the drug for non-medicinal purposes.

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The vote in Portland and the upcoming referendums in South Portland and Lewiston have more political significance than legal impact because police officials say they will still enforce state law against marijuana possession.

Legalization advocates say “yes” votes in the referendums would only support legal possession and use by adults 21 and older, and that legalization would allow for more controls on a drug that is widely available illegally.

Handy, the Lewiston School Committee chairman, disagreed, saying he sponsored the resolution passed this week because the issue “is a matter that would gravely impact our city and our students if legalization became a reality.”

The committee voted 4-2 in favor of the resolution, with members Matthew Roy and Linda Scott opposed. Roy signed the petition to put the issue on the ballot and has said he supports legalization. Committee members Cynthia Mendros, Trinh Burpee and Jama Mohamed were absent and did not vote.

Handy said the issue is of particular concern to school officials because of the number of Lewiston teens who say they have used marijuana and don’t believe it comes with risks.

A 2013 Maine Integrated Youth Healthy Survey showed that more than 34 percent of Lewiston Middle School students and more than 55 percent of Lewiston High School students believe there is “no risk” or a “slight risk” from regular marijuana use. The biennial survey showed a 54 percent increase in Androscoggin County middle school students reporting they have used marijuana in the past 30 days.

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The resolution also cites research that shows a link between heavy marijuana use in adolescence and problems with attention, learning, memory and processing speeds.

Lewiston Superintendent Bill Webster said the school department has seen an increase in the number of disciplinary issues connected to marijuana. Webster said he used to go a year without handling any situations that required extended suspensions or expulsion, but the School Committee was involved with four cases last year. Most of those involved students who brought marijuana to school to distribute or sell.

“We’ve had one or more students that have accessed it from a parent or relative that was receiving medical marijuana,” Webster said. “We sometimes forget what we do as adults can quickly be viewed as acceptable behavior on the parts of students and children.”

Scott Gagnon, state director of Smart Approaches to Marijuana Maine, praised the School Committee for showing “remarkable leadership” by passing the resolution.

“They recognized the issue for what it is, which is an issue of normalizing drug use and setting up barriers to learning and education when we need to tear them down,” he said. “Normalizing drug use leads to more youth experimenting and using drugs.”

David Boyer, Maine political director of the Marijuana Policy Project, which proposed the ordinances, said legalizing marijuana for adults doesn’t necessarily mean teens will have more access to the drug.

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“We do think that it would stem teens from getting marijuana because you would have to be an adult to purchase it under that system. Right now we don’t have control, we have drug dealers that sell to kids,” he said. “We can choose to bury our heads in the sand in talking with adults and teens about marijuana, or we can be honest and have a real dialogue about the relative harm of marijuana. The fact is marijuana is safer than alcohol.”

Statewide surveys of youths do show that teens are now more likely to see marijuana as harmless than they were in years past. However, the latest survey, completed in 2013, does not show a rise in pot use by Maine high schoolers since 2009. About 22 percent have said they smoked pot in the previous 30 days, according to a Maine Integrated Youth Health Survey conducted in 2009, 2011 and 2013.

While Lewiston and South Portland voters are set to vote Nov. 4, the future of the ballot question in York is less clear.

After a judge last week rejected a request for an emergency injunction to place the question on the York ballot, advocates are still considering whether to appeal, Boyer said.

The Marijuana Policy Project and other plaintiffs in the lawsuit against York can appeal to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, although the town of York’s deadline for the Board of Selectmen to approve ballot items has passed.


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