MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT MARIJUANA PERVADE POPULAR THOUGHT

It's probably a relatively good indication that marijuana has a
pronounced presence on college campuses when students circle 4/20 on
their calendars and look expectantly to the spring afternoon-for
whatever reason. I set out, then, to try to discover those reasons to
see whether not my peers understood the risks of their behavior and
whether or not an afternoon of listless philosophizing would prove
worth the repercussions.

I have a free spirited friend at school that we'll call Felicity
owing to her jovial disposition. On the Friday before the 20th she
put a red asterisk on my daily planner for the following Sunday. She
said, "This weekend, Paul!" I looked at her and questioned whether or
not she knew me.

I declined, not with a condescending prudishness, but just with an
amicable smile, and after class I asked her what she got out of her
experience with weed: "It just makes me feel good. I'm dizzy and
clear in the same space. It calms me down."

"Doesn't alcohol do that?" I asked.

"Yes, but there are too many calories in beer. You should be pleased
at least, since it's not as bad for you as smoking."

After that little exchange the bell tower started tolling out 11
sonorous dongs, and we both departed for our next classes. Her
statement stayed with me for a little while. I wondered how something
should have such prevalence and yet the picture about it could be so
distorted. Marijuana- Weed, Pot, Grass, Reefer, Ganja, Mary Jane,
Blunt, Joint, Roach, Nail, - cannot in any way be construed as less
dangerous than cigarettes. Some light digging on the CASP (Center for
Substance Abuse Prevention) website, www.health.org, reveals that
Marijuana contains, in a single joint, 400 known chemicals and that
each contains four times as many cancer-causing chemicals as a
filtered cigarette.

Noticeably around campus my friends lauded marijuana over cigarettes
because, "You know, they just aren't addictive." Yet, the facts just
simply do not foster this supposition. To throw out just one
statistic, in the late 1990s, over 160,000 people entered drug
treatment programs to break the hold marijuana had on their lives.
Add to these problems of addiction the new research coming out that
illustrates that THC operates as an immunosuppressant and we have on
our hands a dangerous myopia among young people as it concerns this
gateway drug.

As it turned out, Felicity did not put herself in harm's way-but only
because my school and the De Pere Police Department have a cozy
relationship with one another, which sullied a number of would-be
4/20 celebrants' plans.

We need to distance ourselves from a laissez-faire approach to
Marijuana as this sort of benign narcotic used by people who cause no
harm. Just last year, 77,000 people were admitted to emergency rooms
as a result of marijuana related problems; ie, people thought they
could drive but really functioned no better than a person well over
the legal limit, not to mention complications that came from
marijuana laced with other narcotics.

It's illegal to sell, illegal to possess, and illegal to use.
Consider the ramifications. Don't turn a blind eye, and don't dismiss
it as youthful indiscretion because the cost of apathy is too much to bear.

Paul Utterback is an intern for the A.H.E.A.D. Coalition