Cannabis Sativa. Photo by Branden Eastwood
Between Oct. 1 2008 and Sept. 30 2009, the Arizona State University Police Department made 173 arrests involving drugs, all of which involved marijuana or marijuana paraphernalia, according to ASU police record.
While Marijuana isn’t the leading cause of arrests at ASU, its growing presence reflects a trend both campus and nationwide.
In September 2009, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services published the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. The survey found that over 100 million Americans have tried marijuana. The survey also found that almost 6,000 Americans try marijuana for the first time every day. The mean age of the new marijuana smokers is 17.8 years, slightly older than last year’s finding.
A survey published in July 2008 in PLoS Medicine, a journal of the Public Library of Science, found that marijuana usage in the United States is far higher than in any other country.
According to PLoS, drug use is not simply related to drug policy, “since countries with stringent user-level illegal drug policies did not have lower levels of use than countries with liberal ones.”
Proposed Voter Initiative for Medical Marijuana
In November 2010, Arizona voters will have the chance to place a new initiative on the ballot. The Arizona Medical Marijuana Policy Project is campaigning to allow Arizonans to vote on the “Arizona Medical Marijuana Act,” which would make Arizona the 14th state to legalize medical marijuana.
The proposed law would allow patients with specified medical conditions to obtain marijuana after first receiving a doctor recommendation. Andrew Myers, campaign manager for the AMMPP, says marijuana has certain medical advantages for those with cancer, Parkinson’s disease, HIV and AIDS.
“If we’re going to have a war over marijuana, we should at least take the sick and the dying off the battlefield,” Myers says.
Many ASU students support the bill and a number of them are currently working for the campaign, Myers adds.
Patients under the proposed initiative would receive medical marijuana from 120 dispensaries around the state. These dispensaries would be held under a set of regulations and would be inspected by the Arizona Department of Health Services.
Currently, the proposed measure is in the signature-gathering stage. The Arizona Medical Marijuana Act will need to get 153,165 valid signatures by July 1 in order to appear on the November ballot.
Drug Effects
The National Institute on Drug Abuse states that THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, acts on certain areas of the brain known as cannabinoid receptors. The centers of the brain with the highest concentration of these receptors are the ones “that influence pleasure, memory, thoughts, concentration, sensory and time perception, and coordinated movement,” according to the NIDA.
The effects of marijuana influence these receptors, causing difficulty in thinking and problem solving, loss of coordination, distorted perceptions and problems with learning and memory.
According to the NIDA, “marijuana’s adverse impact on learning and memory can last for days or weeks after the acute effects of the drug wear off. As a result, someone who smokes marijuana every day may be functioning at a suboptimal intellectual level all of the time.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that the chronic effects of marijuana include “short-term memory impairment and slowness of learning,” “decreased sperm count,” difficulties with prenatal development, and “impaired immune response.”
ASU Students and Marijuana
For anonymity, the names in this section have been changed.
Student marijuana usage. Photo by Alexandra Karamanova.
None of the students interviewed use marijuana for medical purposes, but instead use it for recreation.
Meet Charles, a Bioengineering major with a 4.2 GPA. Before the interview, Charles popped a couple Vicodin, lit up a joint, and opened a beer. He began smoking marijuana on a high school retreat his freshmen year. Since then, it has been a fairly steady practice.
“I normally smoke, like, once a week,” says Charles.
Also present was Ivan, a sophomore mathematics major, and David, a freshman English major. Ivan, unlike Charles, didn’t start smoking marijuana in high school.
Ivan says that while he decided to start smoking in college, he couldn’t find anyone to smoke with during his first semester at ASU. He has progressed to smoking almost every day since.
He says he started seeing money in terms of how much marijuana he could buy. After getting his wisdom teeth out over the summer, Ivan traded his prescribed Vicodin medication into funds for marijuana.
“I got my prescription and I literally said, ‘How much weed can I get with this?” Ivan says.
The current street price for a gram of “good” marijuana is about $20, according to all three students. The price depends on the quality as well as its status. Certain “designer” strains of marijuana such as “White Widow” or “Woodstock” are much more expensive, says Ivan.
Ivan says despite the risks, he has been in cars with strangers so that he could buy marijuana.
Charles says he doesn’t go to dealers. Instead he pays $5 extra to have the marijuana delivered to his house.
“There’s a difference between someone who sells pot and someone who deals drugs,” Charles said. “Your average [drug] dealer is someone who just wants to make enough to smoke for free.”
Jacob, a marijuana grower and former dealer, disagrees.
“Selling weed is just like selling coke,” says Jacob. “The money goes to bad people 99 percent of the time.”
Jacob says he once purchased a quarter-pound of marijuana for $1100. He says the person he bought from would drive to San Diego, buy marijuana from a gang, and return to Arizona. One month after buying the quarter-pound, he says the man who sold it to him was shot.
Jacob started smoking in 7th or 8th grade. He says the motivation to smoke came from older kids he respected. Jacob says that both his parents smoke as well. After he started, he continued throughout high school, but says he quit smoking once for two years. He says he was motivated to quit after realizing a difference in his thinking.
“My cognitive abilities definitely go down [because of marijuana],” Jacob says. “It’s noticeable for me.”
Jacob says marijuana is primarily sold through word of mouth. When he sold marijuana, Jacob says he would convince new buyers that they were getting better quality than they actually received.
“We just made up the most ridiculous names,” Jacob says. “Many times it was just the exact same stuff from the exact same batch, but each time [the buyers] would tell us it got better and better.”
Jacob continues to smoke but believes it might be time to stop again soon. He says that if he could change anything about his past involving marijuana, he wouldn’t have sold marijuana with his friends at ASU.
“We didn’t realize the risks we were taking,” says Jacob.
The Laws
A female Marijuana plant well before a harvest. Photo by Branden Eastwood
In Arizona, the laws surrounding marijuana use are extremely strict. According to The Bulletin of Cannabis Reform, Arizona has the second-highest penalty for one ounce possession in the country, behind Florida. In Arizona, possession charges for one ounce or less can result in prison sentences for up to one and a half years, accompanied by $150,000 in fines. Compare this to California, which generally charges a fine of $100 for possession of an ounce or less.
ASU students face an additional set of sanctions imposed by the university. According to the University Student Initiatives Manual, sanctions will be imposed upon those who violate the policy which may include “suspension or expulsion and may also include the requirement that the student participate in a drug education or assessment.”
Contact the reporter at sbauge@asu.edu
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Correction: a photo was removed under the “Proposed Voter Initiative for Medical Marijuana.” The photo did not belong to the Arizona Medical Marijuana Policy Project and had no association with their campaign. Thank you.