CHASING THE 'HIGH' LIFE

Issues of Legality Don't Deter Some Student Smokers

The driver reaches for the ignition, and the engine lets out a loud
roar with a clockwise turn of his right hand. It doesn't hold my ears'
attention for long. The engine's noise is quickly subdued by speakers,
blaring Metallica's "Master of Puppets."

I have no idea where the three of us are going, but a particular
destination isn't the purpose of our drive. To be blunt, the purpose
of the drive-for the two men in the front seat-is to "get high."

It's obvious they're anxious to achieve that purpose. Most of their
conversation during the drive revolves around marijuana.

"You ever smoked the resin before?" the driver, who wants to be
referred to as Malik, asks.

"Well, I've laced a cigarette with it," the passenger, who prefers to
be called Pickles, responds.

They proceed to joke about past "highs," run-ins with police and good
deals they've gotten in the past.

Their desire for marijuana seems like a hummingbird's desire for
nectar.

The drive is short, lasting no more than five minutes. We park at an
apartment complex close to campus, so close that some of the
dormitories are within sight.

"I know that guy smokes, and that guy and that guy," Malik says,
pointing at different parts of the apartment building. "They all
usually have some preh-ty dank [stuff]."

He grasps the key in the ignition and turns it counter-clockwise. The
engine stops, but the music continues. He reaches for the console
between himself and the passenger. He grabs two objects out of a
compartment-a pipe and a plastic bag.

"Man, I gotta learn those Spanish flash cards sometime tonight,"
Pickles says. "It's all those verbs. Ya know, the weird Spanish words."

The driver seems apathetic toward the passenger's need to
study.

He's too busy preparing the marijuana to be smoked.

He moves the substance in between the tips of his fingers and pieces
of it fall like snow onto a piece of paper torn from a notebook. He
grabs the opposite ends of the paper, pulls them together and pours
the marijuana into his pipe.

"Ya got a light?" Malik asks.

Pickles removes a blue lighter from his pocket and passes it to Malik.
Malik brings the pipe to his mouth with his left hand, raising the
lighter above the bowl of the pipe with his right. He lights the
marijuana and inhales.

Malik hands Pickles the lighter and pipe, and Pickles repeats the
process. The men keep passing, lighting and inhaling for about 15
minutes as smoke fills the car. Their conversations wander from their
drug use to family, school and music.

"Dude, it's getting late," Pickles says. "You care if we roll
back?"

Through the billowing smoke, the green analog clock projects the time:
12:47.

"Sure, man," Malik replies.

The two are done "getting high" for the night, but it won't be long
before Malik's thirst has him hankering for more.

What these two weed-smokers did on that night hasn't always been
illegal in the Land of the Free. In fact, once upon a time, marijuana
production was highly encouraged because of its other uses which have
no relation to "getting high."

Larry Sloman explores this era in his book, Reefer
Madness.

In the book, Sloman says that marijuana plants were used by colonial
Americans for the production of clothing and paper. Its use was so
important that, in 1762, Virginia penalized farmers who didn't grow
it.

Sloman even writes that the first president of the United States
himself, George Washington, wrote in his diary that he grew marijuana
plants.

But its uses for products lessened because of inventive farming
machinery like the cotton gin which made other plants more efficient.
As the demand for marijuana products decreased, the demand for its
medicinal purposes increased. When inhaled, it relieves the pain of
ailments.

America wasn't the only country mad for reefer before it became a
social no-no.

Mexicans had a strong taste for marijuana, according to Reefer
Madness. Weed, Sloman says, is embedded in Mexico's culture and folklore.

As more Mexicans immigrated to America looking for work in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, their custom of smoking marijuana
immigrated, as well.

In 1937 came the Marijuana Tax Act, the first federal law imposed on
reefer. It placed a prohibitive tax on producing, manufacturing and
selling weed.

Though this act only placed a federal tax on weed initially, it would
lead a destructive path to the downfall of legalized
marijuana-use.

But this use, though illegal, has not declined at all. The National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) reports that, in
2006, an average of 95 citizens per hour were arrested for something
marijuana-related. Drugscience.org reports that these arrests cost
taxpayers $41.8 billion annually.

Every time Malik smokes weed, he runs the risk of becoming a part of
these statistics. But he doesn't care.

"You got anything?" he says into his phone. "Cool, cool. You at your
apartment right now? Alright, I'll be over there in a minute."

He makes the short drive to Scarlett Commons Apartments, less than a
minute away.

When we park, I reach for the door handle.

"Naw, dude, don't get out," Malik says. "Just stay
here."

He gets out of the car. I wait in the cold night for about five
minutes.

When he returns, I ask why he hasn't been gone for
long.

"We didn't mess with weed etiquette tonight like I usually do with
him," Malik says.

"Weed etiquette?" I ask, having never heard such a
term.

"If a friend plays the roll of middleman in a deal," Malik explains,
"or finds the hook-up for an individual looking for bud, it's common
courtesy to smoke that person out."

He drives to his brother's apartment complex, far from campus. His
brother wished to be called Rusty. Two of Malik's friends, a man and a
woman, are already hanging out at the apartment.

The scene looks like a drug-induced, collegiate stereotype. Empty beer
bottles and half-full ashtrays lie on a glass table in the middle of
the room.

Malik walks to the restroom and closes the door behind
him.

Behind the sealed door, I hear the plea of desperate lungs. "Cough,
cough," they cry.

The door opens a few minutes later, and Malik emerges with an army of
smoke stalking his path. He removes a cigar from his pocket, puts it
in his mouth and lights it.

"Anyone wanna partake in a general session with me?" Malik asks the
group. No one responds.

"What's a general session?" I ask.

Malik laughs. "Just smokin' weed, man."

He got high alone that night.

He walks into the bathroom four more times. Each time, I hear coughs
from behind the door. Each time, he emerges with the same cloud
billowing behind him.

Malik isn't the only member of the MTSU's marijuana
scene.

Last school year, 135 violations involving drugs and drug
paraphernalia were filed. That was 14.6 percent of all violations
filed on campus, according to the most recent TBI Crime on Campus Report.

But one national organization that has a chapter on campus believes
that there should be no violations concerning marijuana.

NORML says its mission is to "move public opinion sufficiently to
achieve the repeal of marijuana prohibition so that the responsible
use of cannabis by adults is no longer subject to penalty."

As I followed Malik three more times on his quest for "highness," I
realized that potential penalties were no deterrent for him in
usingmarijuana. I followed him on campus with a man referred to as "Top
Dog." The second time was with a young, female student in the same
place Malik had smoked with Pickles.

The third time, Malik ventured far from MTSU. So far, in fact, that,
for as far as the eye could see, there were fields of livestock,
rusting machinery and low lying hills identifying where one farm ended
and another starts.

We were going to Memaw's house, a 92-year-old woman with
Alzheimer's.

Malik is a good friend of her caregiver, who wanted to be called
Angel.

Angel and Memaw live on a farm that Memaw and her deceased husband
purchased many decades ago. Angel was hired by Memaw's son to live at
the house with her to assist with what most would call "simple tasks."

When we arrive at the house, Angel pops his head out of the door and
whispers, "Memaw isn't sleepin' yet. Wait like 30 minutes."

Memaw doesn't know what goes on in her living room while she
sleeps.

So we wait, talking and staring over the fields of cows on the front
porch.

Angel pops his head out again.

"Alright, guys. Come on in."

The two get right to business. Malik takes out a bag with a
greenish-brown substance in it.

"Here, smell this," he says, handing the bag to Angel.

"Man, smells good," Angel says. "You mind if I grind it with my
grinder?"

Angel poured the contents of the bag into his "grinder," and begins to
crush it like pepper.

"This is my last time smoking," Malik says. "Well, that is until
4-20." They laugh.

"Do you think that'll get us both high?" he asks Angel.

"Just as much as anything else will," Angel replies. They both laugh
again.

He stops grinding and pours the substance into his
pipe.

"Let's go outside for this," Angel says.

Once outside, they began lighting, inhaling and passing. With no
provocation, Angel pours out his feelings about marijuana use.

"I'm a proud stoner since 1998, and I'll probably be one for my whole
life," he says. "Everyone in my life knows I'm one. But what most of
them don't know is that I acknowledge weed is the enemy. There is one
benefit weed has to offer, though. And that is it allows me to view
life from an altered state. Weed gives you a reference point outside
of your own perspective. If you can get a different perspective on
reality, you can really see life for how it really is. After all,
black wouldn't be black without white."

"Why have you never told it to me like that before?" Malik
asks.

"I've tried to tell you that many times. But after five minutes of
smoking, we always end up watching cartoons." They laugh again. Then
they laugh more and more, and smoke more and more, until all of it was
gone. Malik says goodbye to his friend and, as we drive away, goodbye
to rural America.

Each time Malik smokes, he says, a sense of calm comes over him. A
calm that, some might say, is too calm.

"Weed causes people to be calm, yes, but it causes them to be too
calm," warns Kevin Brown, program coordinator for Arms of Grace
Alcohol and Drug Counseling Center. "Pot smokers lose all motivation.
It doesn't sound like big deal, but when you're supposed to be going
to school or work, it becomes a big deal."

He says that even though pot-smokers may not see immediate
consequences, memory loss begins to set in after a while, especially
for those truly addicted to weed.

"It's addictive because it changes your perspective on life," Brown
says. "When you smoke it, chemical reactions happen within the brain
that cause a euphoric way of seeing things."

So why do people do it knowing that it's addictive and
illegal?

"People do it for the first time mostly because of peer pressure,"
Brown says. "And once they have that first experience, they'll spend
their time chasing that first high. Each high is different, so they'll
never get it again, but that doesn't mean they won't try."

And maybe, for Malik, that's true. Maybe he is still chasing that
high. Or maybe he's trying to get a different perspective on life.

"When I smoke, my mind is released into deeper levels of imaginative
thoughts and experiences," he says. "I sincerely believe it has
contributed to my open-mindedness toward my beliefs regarding the
questionable existence that we live in."