Local recovery community weighs in on legalizing recreational cannabis
Kim Connors, 54, of Leisenring fears that legalizing recreational marijuana would be a big mistake, going against what she preaches as a recovering addict to her sponsees and others in recovery.
Elizabeth Paulo pondered the potential impact of legalizing recreational cannabis on the local recovery community at the Tradition One recovery club in Uniontown, where she is vice president of the board. Paulo views alcohol as more of a gateway drug than marijuana, and she noted that legalizing recreational pot could yield funding for education and other priorities.
Joey Pagano, 43, of Carroll Township, former president of the Charleroi-based recovery group Club Serenity who is now a CARE navigator at SPHS Behavioral Health in Monessen, said that it won't matter to him or other recovering addicts who have embraced abstinence from drugs as their means of recovery whether recreational cannabis is legalized.
Kim Connors is a Connellsville Area School District bus driver and a recovering addict.
She does what she can in her position as the former to keep her passengers from becoming the latter.
Connors, 54, of Leisenring picks and chooses her battles in policing the language that the students on her bus use, but f-bombs aren’t allowed. Neither are the words “cigarettes” or “vapes.”
Or “weed.”
“Those are strong nos,” Connors said. ” … I don’t want to hear it.”
The thought of legalizing marijuana for recreational use irritates her.
“The legalization of any kind of drug is just — the battle that I fight — it devastates me because it’s like giving carte blanche to go out and do something else,” said Connors, 10 years sober from a cocaine addiction.
She does her best to guide her 31-year-old son and sponsees through recovery, co-founding a closed Facebook group focused on addiction advocacy and reform.
“I don’t think in any way, shape or form that we need another legal way to alter a state of mind,” Connors said.
Fayette, Greene, Washington and Westmoreland counties from 2015 through 2017 suffered a combined 989 overdose deaths, according to a September 2018 report from the Drug Enforcement Administration Philadelphia Division and the University of Pittsburgh.
But those on the front lines locally in the battle against the opioid crisis have differing views on what impact recreational cannabis might have on the fight against addiction. Some say it’s a gateway drug that would invite further havoc; others think it would have little impact on recovery efforts and may actually benefit society.
“Is it going to hurt the recovery community? I’d say no,” said Joey Pagano, 43, of Carroll Township, a recovering addict and former president of the Charleroi-based recovery group Club Serenity.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse notes that marijuana use is linked to other substance use disorders; but that the majority of people who use marijuana do not go on to use other, “harder” substances.
“They call it a gateway drug, but in all honesty, alcohol is just as bad,” said Pagano, who works at SPHS Behavioral Health in Monessen, connecting those in active addiction with treatment resources.
Elizabeth Paulo, 31, of Morgantown, West Virginia, runs two women’s recovery houses in Uniontown, where her partner Brant Copple, 41, runs three men’s recovery houses. Alcohol has been the gateway drug for most of the addicts that Paulo has listened to.
It was for her.
“It’s a gateway because it’s illegal,” Copple said. “So the guy that sells marijuana also sells cocaine, he also sells the pills. He sells the other side of the gateway. So if you can only go to a store that sells marijuana, perhaps that ends that connection. Maybe not.”
Vincent Weaver, 62, of Uniontown, a Fayette County Drug & Alcohol Commission board member who overcame a crack cocaine addiction in the early 1990s, doesn’t think marijuana is necessarily a gateway drug either.
“It’s no more a gateway than alcohol,” Weaver said.
But Fayette County Drug & Alcohol Commission clinical supervisor Brian Reese said at the recreational cannabis listening tour stop in Fayette County that he “vehemently” believes pot is a gateway drug.
“It is a drug that is destroying families,” Reese said. ” … I have never seen in 25 years of (treating) addiction a benefit from it. I look for it, but I can’t find it.”
Dunbar Township resident Jim Snyder said during the listening session that marijuana led him to 17 years of destruction after he was introduced to it at 14.
In his 30th year of sobriety, Snyder fears the effect that legalizing pot could have on young people, his heart broken by recently losing two stepchildren to opioid addiction.
“The only drug that still talks to me to this day is marijuana,” Snyder said. “For them to say it’s not habitual or addictive, as a user, I just don’t believe that.”
Legalized pot may have a limited impact on those already in addiction or recovery, several recovering addicts predicted.
“(M)aking it maybe more readily available like alcohol, yeah, maybe they’ll use it more,” Pagano said. “But if you’re in recovery, you’re in recovery.”
Pagano said several of his clients at SPHS have pursued medical marijuana cards to see if that would help treat their addiction.
Opioid use disorder is one of the 21 qualifying conditions for which Pennsylvanians may participate in the state’s medical marijuana program.
A 2018 analysis of Medicaid prescription data published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine found both medical and recreational cannabis laws were associated with annual reductions in opioid prescribing rates.
“If I had a loved one who was in some kind of chronic pain and the doctor was going to write them a script for something, I would much rather have them smoking marijuana or taking some kind of marijuana oil than taking (an) opiate,” Weaver said.
Since insurance companies generally do not cover drugs like cannabis, medical marijuana is not insured, meaning that the pain relief cannabis can offer simply costs too much.
Some have argued legalized, state-regulated recreational marijuana could ultimately be a cheaper alternative to medical marijuana, and therefore, to opioids.
Regardless, Paulo doesn’t see recreational pot as something that would knock those staying in her recovery houses off their course toward sobriety.
“I don’t really see that ever causing more of a problem if it gets legalized than it does now,” Paulo said.
Local addicts predict that legalization will eventually happen, whether they like it or not. Weaver recalled there was no Pennsylvania Lottery prior to its establishment in 1971.
“It’s a given now,” Weaver said, “and it’ll be the same with marijuana.”
Until then, those in the recovery community will have to grapple with the prospect of legalized recreational cannabis and whether it’s worth supporting.
“I can’t do it in my heart,” Connors said.