Pubdate: Fri, 11 Nov 2005
Source: Rocky Mountain Collegian, The (CO Edu)
Copyright: 2005 Rocky Mountain Collegian
Contact:  http://www.collegian.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1370
Author: Vimal Patel
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)

PUSHING POT: CSU AND BEYOND

After his group's reverberating pot victory last week making Denver
the first U.S. city to legalize the use of recreational marijuana,
Mason Tvert has garnered national attention.

He's been juggling calls from several of the nation's top newspapers,
including the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post, and debating
pot opponents on cable networks like Fox News and MSNBC.

But the main focus of Tvert, executive director of Safer Alternative
for Enjoyable Recreation (SAFER), is still CSU and other Colorado
universities, which he says are at the forefront of the national
alcohol problem - one that could be alleviated if drinkers would toke
instead.

At CSU, Tvert said his group plans on ratcheting up the pressure to
force administration officials to stop penalizing pot smokers.

"Marijuana is a relatively benign substance and it's far less harmful
than alcohol," he said. "There's not one single law that says a school
needs to penalize a student for using marijuana."

Currently, possession of less than an ounce of marijuana is grounds
for up to a $100 fine and a mandatory $100 drug-offender surcharge,
according to state law. It's a petty offense, "like a speeding
ticket," Tvert said.

The same way university officials don't punish students who receive
speeding tickets, they shouldn't punish students who get caught with
pot, he said.

Ron Hicks, assistant director of Conflict Resolution and Student
Conduct Services, said each case is taken on an individual basis.
Depending on the severity, possession of marijuana can lead to
anything from a letter of warning to expulsion.

But he also added that no student has ever been expelled for a
first-time possession of up to an ounce of marijuana. If a student is
expelled, it's the result of more serious violations or a history of
disciplinary action.

"We want to make them understand what they violated," he said, "so
they don't put themselves in that position again."

University officials would not comment on whether they believed
marijuana to be less harmful than alcohol.

"We're not going to promote one hazardous substance over another,"
said CSU spokesman Brad Bohlander.

Denver City Councilman Charlie Brown said Tvert's campaign, which
argued that a world filled with pot smokers would be safer than a
world filled with drunks, was deceptive and misled voters.

"I still believe marijuana is a gateway drug," he said. "Some users,
not all, go on to harder drugs."

Tvert, 23, said his group was created last year after the
alcohol-poisoning deaths of two Colorado students, including CSU
student Samantha Spady.

"If they would have used marijuana instead of alcohol, they'd still be
alive," he said, adding that there has never been a marijuana overdose
death or a lung cancer death to a marijuana-only smoker.

Tvert blames the CSU administration for trying to protect the
university's image without doing what's right. Fort Collins officials
and college administrators need to realize the town has a problem with
alcohol and deal with the issue more proactively, he said.

"Currently, we have a dishonest policy that pushes students to choose
alcohol over marijuana," he said. "If they want to cut down on serious
alcohol problems, they need to give students an alternative."

Tvert acknowledges that pot has negative effects. But so do
cheeseburgers and skim milk, he said. The point is the drug is not as
harmful as alcohol, but rather a safer alternative to it.

City and state officials have said Denver voters' decision to make pot
legal will have no bearing on how the law is enforced. State and
national laws trump local laws, they say.

But the victory in Denver has energized the movement to legalize
marijuana, and has given groups like SAFER, which have traditionally
been marginalized by weed opponents, a newfound respect and legitimacy.

A spokesman for Denver mayor John Hickenlooper had joked about giving
the pro I-100 campaign a delivery of Oreos and Doritos, Tvert said.
This was a reference to the craving for snacks that many pot-smokers
experience.

But SAFER fired back. They sent the brewery-owning Hickenlooper a body
bag with a fake foot sticking out, surrounded by jugs of alcohol from
his brewery, and posed a question to the mayor: "Which is worse, an
alcohol-induced death or the munchies?"

It's attention-grabbing tactics like this that launched a tiny
campaign into the national spotlight.

Brown said voters approved the measure - which passed 54 to 46 percent
- - for three main reasons: a lack of organized opposition, people
thought it was a meaningless vote, and voters believed it to be a
protest vote against the controversial federal drug war.

The councilman joked that Tvert's actions and words lead him to
believe the 23-year-old could be with an alcohol prohibition front
group.

SAFER also links alcohol and violent crimes such as abuse and sexual
assault. In fact, Tvert has made a connection between the abundant
flow of alcohol in Fort Collins and the unusually high number of
reported rapes in the city.

He also shoots back at critics who say marijuana users are financing
gang-related violence, saying one way to eliminate the criminal
element of marijuana is to have the government regulate it.

But some, like Brown, say the argument is ridiculous.

"That's like saying the German air raids against London were really
urban renewal," he said. "That's the kind of logic he implies... It's
very frustrating trying to communicate with the guy."

SAFER officials said they have plans in place to make pot use legal in
all of Colorado and the nation.

Since the passage of I-100 last week, SAFER has been inundated with
thousands of messages throughout the country and the world, most
supportive but a couple death threats as well, Tvert said.

In the Nov. 1 election, the most prominent issue was Referendum C, but
its passage didn't grab national and international headlines as
forcefully as the approval of I-100.

But whether one considers SAFER a serious political force or a serious
joke, it's clear pot smokers throughout the land now have the rallying
point they've been lacking: the will of the voters in a major American
city.

"When we started on the CU and CSU campuses, it was the beginning of a
national movement, and it's clearly picking up," Tvert said. "The
tides have changed." 
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