COLLEGE DORMS BAN USE OF MEDICAL MARIJUANA

A statewide jump in medical marijuana card applications doesn't seem
to have affected college students much when it comes to living in
residence halls.

The majority of Colorado's four-year public institutions require
students, with few exceptions, to live on-campus their first one or
two years. None of them allows medical marijuana cardholders to smoke
marijuana in residence halls.

Mesa State College is one of those schools, requiring freshmen and
sophomores under the age of 21 who don't live with a parent or spouse
in Mesa County to live in a college residence hall. In those halls,
it's against college policy to smoke or store marijuana, whether
it's used for medical reasons or not, according to John Marshall, the
college's vice president for student services.

"It's simply not something we can accommodate," he
said.

Marijuana, tobacco, alcohol and nonprescription drugs are all banned
from Mesa State residence halls. Medical marijuana is not addressed
separately from marijuana in general in the student housing guide,
but Marshall said that would be remedied by the fall.

So far, no students have asked the college to be released from the
freshman and sophomore requirement to live on campus so they can use
a medical marijuana card off-campus, Marshall said. But some schools
have experienced that, including the University of Colorado at Boulder.

CU Director of Residence Life Paula Bland said she is not sure
exactly how many students at the school have asked to have their
housing deposit returned so they can use medical marijuana. But it
has happened a handful of times this year, she said.

"It's probably more this year than it was last year. Last year we
just started seeing students have medical marijuana cards," she said.

Bland said all of the requests came midyear, when a student already
had been living in a residence hall and wanted to move out.

Fort Lewis College spokesman Mitch Davis said he wouldn't be
surprised if the college received some requests from cardholders to
live off-campus, but so far that hasn't happened.

Colorado State University spokesman Brad Bohlander and University of
Northern Colorado spokesman Nate Haas said they haven't heard of any
students on their campuses asking to live off-campus to use medical
marijuana.

As of Sept. 30, the average age of a medical marijuana patient was
40, according to Colorado Department of Public Health and
Environment. The department reported at that time Mesa County had the
10th largest amount of cardholders in the state.