Pubdate: Tue, 25 Sep 2012
Source: Daily Campus, The (UConn, CT Edu)
Copyright: 2012 ThesDaily Campus
Contact:  http://www.dailycampus.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2778
Author: Sam Tracy

MEDICAL MARIJUANA SHOULD BE ALLOWED ON CAMPUS

In less than a week, Connecticut's medical marijuana program will 
take effect. Starting on Monday, Oct. 1, people who meet the 
requirements under the new law will be able to meet with their 
doctors and get a temporary registration certificate, allowing them 
to legally possess and consume marijuana for medical purposes.

Chances are, some of those who register will be college students. 
Like the vast majority of their fellow students, many of those 
patients will live on college campuses. Yet while state law will 
allow these people to possess and consume marijuana to help treat a 
chronic illness, they will be forbidden from consuming their medicine 
in their own homes or anywhere near them. The law passed this year 
states that the laws allowing the use of medical marijuana do "not 
apply to aE& the ingestion of marijuana on any school grounds or any 
public or private school, dormitory, college or university property." 
This is ridiculous. The law should be amended to allow qualifying 
patients to consume their medicine on college and university property.

As the program has not yet begun, it is impossible to tell just how 
many students will qualify as medical marijuana patients. The new law 
allows marijuana to be recommended for a wide variety of conditions, 
specifically including "cancer, glaucoma, positive status for human 
immunodeficiency virus or Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, 
Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, damage to the nervous tissue 
of the spinal cord with objective neurological indication of 
intractable spasticity, epilepsy, cachexia, wasting syndrome, Crohn's 
disease, [and] posttraumatic stress disorder." It also allows for 
more conditions to be added by the Department of Consumer Protection. 
While nowhere near as expansive as laws in states like California, 
Connecticut's law includes enough conditions to allow for a large 
number of people to qualify as patients.

The reason for the ban on medical marijuana consumption on university 
property may have its roots in the stereotype of the college stoner. 
But Connecticut's law is strict enough to ensure that no recreational 
users are making up bogus conditions in order to get their hands on 
legal marijuana. College students in the program are more likely to 
include veterans returning from war with PTSD and wanting to 
re-integrate into civilian life, older students who are trying to go 
back to school despite their health problems. Some of these students 
may appear to be healthy young people at first glance, but have been 
silently battling terrible conditions, such as cancer or Crohn's, for 
many years. There are many students who are in legitimate need of 
medical marijuana, and denying them medicine because of an unfair 
stereotype is offensive and insensitive to the suffering they have endured.

Students who are medical marijuana patients will essentially be 
prohibited from living in on-campus housing. The law's prohibitions 
on consumption on university property applies equally to classrooms, 
dormitories and apartments. Patients living on-campus will need to 
either break the law by consuming marijuana in their home, or go 
somewhere off-campus to use their medicine. If they choose the 
latter, they will either need to stay in that location for many hours 
or get someone to drive them home in order to avoid the risk of 
driving while impaired. This makes no sense when students prescribed 
dangerous narcotics are allowed to possess and consume their medicine 
in on-campus housing.

Proponents of keeping the law as-is will be quick to point out that 
no other prescription medicine is smoked and that the law makes 
sense, since students cannot smoke inside the dorms anyway. Concerns 
about fire safety and smoke damage are legitimate -- I'm not 
advocating that students be able to smoke anything in on-campus 
housing, prescribed or not. However, the law does not just prohibit 
smoking medical marijuana on university property, but ingesting it in 
any way. There are many methods of consuming marijuana that run no 
risk of starting a fire or damaging rental housing, such as cooking 
it into food or using a vaporizer.

The point of any medical marijuana program is to recognize that, when 
used properly, marijuana is a legitimate medicine that can treat a 
variety of conditions. Yet as it stands, Connecticut law draws an 
arbitrary and unnecessary distinction between medical marijuana and 
other medicines recommended to patients by their doctors. To truly 
legitimize medical marijuana, this distinction must be removed.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom