According to a Gallup poll, 58 percent of American believe marijuana should be legalized.
EDITOR’S NOTE: A student’s name was withheld to protect her privacy because she discusses illicit substances.
Weed. Pot. Dope. Grass. Mary Jane. Cannabis. Hash.
All of these words describe marijuana, the drug that has garnered support after Washington state and Colorado approved referendums in the 2012 election legalizing recreational use.
Now, for the first time ever, a majority of Americans, 58 percent, support the legalization of marijuana, according to an October Gallup poll. In this state, 53 percent of voters support legalizing marijuana for adults and taxing and regulating it like alcohol, based on a poll of 678 Maryland voters commissioned by the Marijuana Policy Project and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Angelo Bavaro, a freshman journalism major, said a lot of the newfound support for the legalization of marijuana likely comes from college students.
“That’s just part of the college experience: experimenting with things like drugs [or] sexual experimenting,” Bavaro said. “College students just want to explore.”
Young adults are more likely to experiment with drugs and become addicted because of social and cultural pressures, said Laura Place, the Healthy TERPS coordinator. Healthy TERPS is part of the University Health Center’s substance abuse unit.
“This is also the age when people are most likely to start using. That’s what is sort of kind of normalized and culturally expected,” Place said. “So people who are going to end up having a problem down the line, most of the time, have already or will be using during the college years.”
Carly Brody, a sophomore American Studies major, said she feels many students at this university smoke marijuana on a regular basis.
“This weekend I was just talking to a kid who was telling me all about it. He does use it regularly, he was just like, ‘Yeah, me and my friends smoke every day, multiple times a day,’” Brody said. “I think that people on campus definitely do marijuana for recreation and social reasons.”
Freshman psychology and speech pathology major Alexandra used to get high at least five times a week. Every day after school for the second half of her senior year of high school, she would go to her friend’s house and get stoned. During the summer Alexandra would sneak in a smoke after her parents were asleep. She said it meshed with the ‘I don’t care’ mentality that comes with the end of senior year and the summer before college.
Now that she’s student at this university she only smokes marijuana once every couple weeks but describes drug as a relaxation method to counter her stressful course load.
“You’re very chill, very happy where you are. Physical pain, emotional pain — anything like that is reduced,” Alexandra said. “It should absolutely be legalized. There are much worse things that are legal.”
Place said she has mixed feelings about the debate over legalizing marijuana because of the existing perception that people often smoke the drug for recreational purposes. She said she understands the possible health benefits for medicinal use but isn’t confident that it would have a positive impact overall.
“A lot of people are looking for it because they think, ‘Yeah, it will help with anxiety and it will help with depression.’ Maybe that’s the case, but research is kind of ambiguous about that,” Place said. “But one thing research is not ambiguous about is that it’s not healthy to inhale smoke into your lungs, any kind of smoke.”
But potential negative health impacts don’t concern Brandon Ronon, a senior communication major.
“There are significant findings that show that it has no cause of death in any cases and that it significantly helps people who have disorders that require medical marijuana,” Ronon said. “If it can do any good, then it should be legal.”
Sylvie DeLaHunt, a senior aerospace engineering major, said she sees the marijuana use as an accepted truth of modern society and supports legalization as opposed to black market dealings. Lawfulness will not stop people from smoking or not smoking, she said, so it’s better to standardize the drug.
“It’s probably better if it’s legalized,” DeLaHunt said. “Then people can control and regulate it rather than people having to do it in back alleyways and in secret.”
Craig S. Fryer, a professor in the behavioral and community health department who researches substance use among urban youth and young adults, said legality isn’t usually the biggest deterrent for people.
“People still use marijuana even though it’s illegal, so legality alone doesn’t necessarily change intent of behavior,” Fryer said. “We need to think of this in a socioecological perspective and not just having one strategy to address drug use in this country.”
