In the Associated Student Government election last week, the SAFER Referendum, which stated that marijuana offenses should not be punished by the university any harsher than alcohol offenses, passed with 67 percent of the student vote. The sanctions for marijuana possession and use have not yet been modified, but the changes will be discussed, said Daniel Pugh, vice provost for Student Affairs.
“Most of the students we see make the same poor decisions with marijuana that they do with alcohol,” Pugh said. “It’s not the usage itself that’s the bad thing.”
Proponents of the initiative are excited to meet with Pugh and other university officials to discuss where to go from here, said Robert Pfountz, campaign director for the initiative and a member of the campus chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).
A workforce composed of law enforcement, professors, administrators and members of the SAFER campaign will discuss how to adjust the penalties, said Pfountz, who said he is optimistic that progress will be made because both Pugh and Chancellor G. David Gearhart seem open-minded.
Reducing penalties for marijuana use is a way to curb binge drinking, which is involved in 90 percent of sexual assaults on college campuses and 95 percent of violent crime, Pfountz said. Alcohol encourages violent behavior and contributes to 1,700 deaths on college campuses a year, he said.
Though they do not want to demonize alcohol, members of NORML maintain that it does more damage than marijuana, so the university should not punish people for choosing a safer alternative, Pfountz said.
“There is an epidemic across college campuses of kids being hurt very badly,” he said. “Some may scoff at promoting marijuana over alcohol, but we believe it is a matter of life and death.”
via Marijuana initiative SAFER passes, changes are considered – News.
Ronald Reagan for Chesterfield Cigarettes (tvparty.com)
It’s not really about promoting marijuana over alcohol. It’s really about not promoting alcohol over marijuana! Think about this: how many alcohol ads do you see on TV in a day? Plenty. Now, how many tobacco ads do you see on TV in a day? None.
On April 1, 1970, President Nixon signed legislation banning cigarette ads from airing on television and radio. The ban took effect at midnight on Jan. 2, 1971.
The last cigarette TV commercial (for Virginia Slims) was broadcast on the Johnny Carson Tonight Show at 11:59pm on January 1, 1971. It was expected to be devastating for the networks when tobacco ads were banned – but they did all right without them, in spite of immediately losing $220 million dollars a year in revenues.
Now they make more than that from anti-smoking ads!
Not only did cigarette advertising disappear from TV and radio, but also from all major sporting events as well. Even the most signature tobacco-sponsored event – NASCAR’s Winston Cup – had to become the Nextel Cup.
Yet not only are alcohol ads ubiquitous on TV, advertisement has been open now to the previously-banned hard liquor. In almost every ad, drinkers are reminded to “drink responsibly”. Clearly alcohol use is accepted and promoted in this country, despite the statistics on drunk driving, alcoholism, date rape, domestic violence, and poor health related to alcohol abuse.
More Doctors Smoke Camels (genuineseller.com)
Yes, smoking cigarettes is not good for you, but where is the logical consistency here? What reason can there be for banning a tobacco company’s free speech that wouldn’t apply to alcohol companies? Addictive? Yes to both. Adults-only? Ditto. Legal? Uh-huh. Bad for your health? Surely! The only difference I can find is that smoking responsibly directly affects the people around you (secondhand smoke), whereas drinking resonsibly does not. However, smoking irresponsibly, if there is such a thing, doesn’t warp your personality and turn you into a puking, crying, violent, drunk-driving ass.
Of course, like many laws concerning intoxicating substances, there isn’t a whole lot of logic involved. Our intoxicant laws are based on emotion. Back in the 1910s & 1920s, drinking was evil, a scourge on society. We came up with an emotional law – prohibition. In response more people drank and drank harder liquor. After prohibition was repealed, drinking became cool again. Now, everybody likes a nice beer at the game, wine at dinner, or some cocktails late at night. It’s ingrained into our society and our emotional response to ban it probably made it more of a part of our culture.
Smoking cigarettes used to be a normal accepted part of life; doctors were promoting cigarettes, every TV and movie star smoked, and our GI’s in WWII were given cigarettes in their government rations. Then, some unbiased doctors at the Surgeon General’s office in 1964 determined they would cause cancer and kill you. We placed warning labels on the smokes and soon the emotional backlash to cigarettes was on. This was heightened by Americans discovering we’d been lied to by those doctors and tobacco execs about how bad these thing were. Soon we passed another emotional law banning the free speech rights of tobacco companies.*
So these two legal drugs which kill half a million Americans a year sit on two ends of an emotional spectrum. Cigarettes are reviled, banned from advertising, and considered a dirty filthy habit. Alcohol is celebrated, ubiquitous in advertising, and considered a normal healthy way to relax and socialize.
Now consider cannabis. Not particularly popular in the 1910s and 1920s, but considered to be a scourge on society, as it was the drug of choice for the Mexicans. We came up with an emotional law – prohibition. In response, more people smoke marijuana and it has become much better marijuana. Pot is already ingrained into the shadows of American culture like speakeasies were in the ’20s – would pot become even more ingrained in American culture if prohibition were repealed?
Then consider how the American people reacted to learning they’d been lied to by doctors and government about the health risks of tobacco. Something society once revered became reviled in the span of a decade. Would the reverse happen with cannabis, if the Surgeon General issued an objective report on the health benefits of cannabis?
*No, I don’t want the return of tobacco ads. Banning them has helped reduce smoking. But if we’re going to ban ads for addictive stuff that’s bad for us, Budweiser and McDonald’s have to go, too. And enough of the “ask your doctor about” ads for pharmaceuticals, too; you know, prescription ads used to be illegal, too. I shouldn’t be “asking my doctor” for drugs – that’s called “a pusher”. My doctor should be prescribing my drugs based on my condition and his diagnosis. I don’t need a TV commercial trying to find a way to sell me a pill.
