By Nolan Madden Substance Abuse Prevention: New Paradigms & New Challenges was the headline topic of the ninth annual Northeastern Arizona Substance Abuse Prevention Conference, hosted this month by the Navajo County Drug Project Drug Free Community Coalition & Friends of Navajo County Anti-Drug Coalition, Inc. The forums were held as the country is at a crossroads for marijuana use and acceptance, say the groups, and an era they assert might even be termed “a societal cognitive dissonance”: just as marijuana is becoming more and more potent, and more and more research is confirming its increasing harms, society seems to be not only more accepting of it, but also promoting it more. Navajo County District V Supervisor Dawnafe Whitesinger, who attended the session, considered it time well spent for her as a public official. “A lot of the conversation was geared toward the discussion that’s happening around marijuana, and what things look like when we talk about the future of marijuana in our state in terms of legalization. “County Attorney Brad Carlyon has talked about this, Sheriff K.C. Clark has talked about this and, hearing stories from other states, such as Colorado, and understanding the impact it has that we don’t often hear about, I support the view that we don’t need to legalize marijuana within our state,” said the supervisor. Whitesinger explained that the meeting’s speakers presented drug abuse in America as a health crisis rather than a problem of morals and character, such as with the statistic that drugs are now killing more people in the country than any other non-natural cause at the rate of one person every 19 minutes. “I perceive issues that we don’t want to have or continue to have,” she said. “There are public safety issues and financial burdens that impact us as taxpayers, but also, outside of that, the deterioration of our communities.” Tribal nations, which operate under different legislation from the U.S. government, are working to tackle their own issues surrounding the legalization and regulation of marijuana, and its impacts on tribal cultures as those communities venture into marijuana as a business opportunity. Whitesinger related that she has started doing her own investigative homework locally, as members of the White Mountain Apache tribal community within her district have begun considering medical marijuana dispensaries in this vein. “Certainly I don’t have all the answers, but if you have a major decision around legalization of marijuana, I’m going to ask that you do some research and spend some time investigating what that means, and making a sound decision when you are asked to vote on this issue,” she appealed.