Do you have questions about cannabis?
The Cannabis Community Conversation Program sponsored by Elucidation Strategies will be at the Cherry Hill library on Tuesday evening to lead a discussion on the subject.
“Public education is what we do,” said Tierney Miller, head of reference and adult services for the library. “Certainly around controversial or difficult-to-understand topics like cannabis and cannabis legalization, which is falling into this difficult area where states like ours have legalized it, but federally it has not.”
The Cannabis Community Conversation Program focuses on educating the community about cannabis, including a history that dates back to 3000 B.C.; human use throughout recorded history; federal prohibition and state legalization; and terminology, among other facts.
The library hosted another cannabis program in 2018, prior to the state’s legalization of the substance in a 2020 referendum. That session was led by two attorneys and was a public interest program that addressed mostly public policy and the legislative process.
“We had a lot of interest when we had that program several years ago, so at that time, we recognized a need for education in our community about this topic,” Miller explained. ” … There’s been a lot of stigmatization of it as an illegal drug for many many years, and I just want to be part of presenting to our community the real facts, the real history, the real information about the product itself – its pros, its cons – without a lot of the stigma that has always surrounded it.”
Tuesday’s library session will be led by community educators from Elucidation Strategies, whose mission – according to its website – is “to ensure access to accurate and reliable information about cannabis to help audiences learn more about the complex history of cannabis and its wellness properties by providing an array of high-quality education and outreach consultation services.”
The cannabis discussion will be followed by a question-and-answer session. Miller stressed that neither the Cannabis Community Conversation Program nor the library promotes use of the substance and that the presentation is “purely an education program.”
“I always want us to be a beacon of truth for the community and the place where people can come to, especially in the age of when you Google something, there’s a lot of different information out there that you might find and it’s hard to know what you can trust,” Miller noted.
“I’m glad that the public library is a place where (patrons) they feel they can trust us to get information on a wide array of topics, including this one.”
The cannabis discussion will be held from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in the library’s lower-level conference center. Registration is free at chplnj.org.
The event is not part of the library’s regularly scheduled community conversation program. Next up is a discussion at 10:30 a.m., Thursday, Nov. 16, that will feature author Dr. Benjamin Nero on his memoir, “The Way It Is,” about his life as the first African American graduate of the University of Kentucky’s dental school program and the first Black intern and orthodontics resident at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia.
