Recent stories in "The
Appalachian" give students an opportunity to see the hypocrisy of our
approach to drug policy. From these stories, we learn: 1) Appalachian
State
University is unwilling to enforce its own policy on tobacco smoking
near
campus buildings in spite of the dangers associated with tobacco smoke;
and 2)
students will be arrested for possessing and intending to sell
marijuana in spite
of the relative harmlessness of the drug.
Simple math
demonstrates the ludicrous nature of this
situation (keep in mind these are estimates). There are approximately
15,000
Appalachian students. Roughly 30% of them smoke, meaning there are
approximately
4,500 smokers on campus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) estimates
that between 33% and 50% of smokers will die from smoking-related
illnesses;
thus, between 1,485 and 2,250 current ASU students will die from
smoking
tobacco.
Assuming even 20% of
Appalachian students smoke marijuana
each month, there are approximately 3,000 current marijuana smokers
among our
students. Of these 3,000 students, it is possible that a grand total of
one may
die from marijuana-related illnesses (the CDC says there are only
approximately
1 to 2 marijuana deaths in the entire country in any given year, so
odds are
not a single Appalachian student will die from marijuana).
Comparing the death
rate of these two drugs, we see that
tobacco is about 990 to 1,500 times more deadly per user than
marijuana! In
spite of this obvious discrepancy, the university police will continue
to
arrest marijuana possessors and would-be sellers, and yet, they are
"uninterested" in enforcing the tobacco ban. Meanwhile, those of us who
are
sick of being exposed to the harmful chemicals and carcinogens of
tobacco
smokers on campus are told to use "positive reinforcement" to deal with
this
problem. I can barely stomach the hypocrisy.
Ten years ago I
proposed a six-element plan to my university
to deal with this problem, once and for all. The elements included: 1)
banning
smoking near university entrances; 2) posting large and visible no
smoking
signs at each university entrance; 3) widely publicizing the new
policy; 4)
removing all ashtrays from near campus entries; 5) enforcing the policy
with
police officers the first two weeks of every semester until a new,
voluntary
anti-smoking culture took over; and 6) providing smokers with a place
to smoke
that is not near any campus entrance. Unless every one of these
elements is
implemented, the problem will persist.
I call on university officials with the power to do something about this problem to do something about it once and for all. I am sick of seeing marijuana offenders arrested while the people who force me to breathe in the harmful chemicals and carcinogens of tobacco smoke are literally ignored.