Marijuana Use, Then and Now, on College Campuses in Colorado

 I live overseas in North Africa, but my home state in America is Colorado.  Colorado is one of the two states which just voted to make marijuana legal.

Yesterday at home, I was sorting through some old boxes and came across the letters I had received while in high school and college.  Most were now moldy, and I was reading through them one last time before tossing them all these years later.

2011 Boulder annual “420 Pot-Smoking Rally” on the University of Colorado campus

To my surprise, in letters from 1973, I had a friend at the University of Colorado in Boulder, who said, “If you don’t smoke grass, there is nothing to do on the weekends.”  He wasn’t a smoker, but implied most people around him were.

In another letter, from my boyfriend, who was a serious student at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley,  said, “I went to a party this weekend where there was only supposed to be beer.  But when I got there, there was a pile of marijuana at least three inches high.  Everyone was rolling cigarettes (with the marijuana) and passing them around.  I passed five (marijuana cigarettes) by to other people, but I didn’t try them myself.   Everyone was stoned.”

Mass exhale of marijuana smoke on the University of Colorado at Boulder campus in 2010, at the annual “420 Pot-Smoking Rally.”

I know a student currently at the University of Northern Colorado.  I asked her what the reaction was on campus to the new law.  She told me all the college students voted for it, and many were running around shouting, “Yay!” with their arms in the air after hearing that the new law passed.  But I don’t think everyone is using it.  The student I know told me that she’s been to a couple parties where she smelled the marijuana smoke in the air, but didn’t actually see any marijuana.

I’m sure I must have been around people who used drugs, but I never associated closely enough with them to know that they really were, other than some cousins I had who used marijuana during the hippy era.  I also attended a couple of parties (in Cape Girardeau, Missouri) where I smelled the marijuana smoke in the air, but never actually saw the product myself.   I used to hear during the 1980s that one or two people I knew in business were using cocaine, but I didn’t know whether to believe it or not.

Interestingly, I’ve lived in North Africa for twenty years, and I hear that tourists are always offered marijuana in the souk.  Yet it’s never happened to me.  My husband (a local) says it’s because, “You don’t look like the type of person who would want it,” which is true!  But with it happening to so many others, I felt a little disappointed that I’d never even been asked, or approached.

I don’t know what the percentage of marijuana users in U.S. colleges was then, or is now, but I’m going to guess the percentages were/are similar.  I’m going to guess that back then, 30-40% of people tried it once, and that maybe 15-20% of people might have been regular users in college (and far fewer once they got out of college).

Legal marijuana clinic in Colorado, prior to marijuana being legalized for everyone.

I’m going to guess that with this new law, maybe 60-70% of youth may try it once, and maybe 30% might turn into regular long-term users.  In April, 2012, a marijuana-smoking rally at CU Boulder attracted 10,000 participants.  But it should be remembered that Boulder has 30,000 students, which means that 2/3 did not attend.

I predict it will be a novelty for a generation, and as health problems start to show up in regular users (such as happened with tobacco cigarettes), people will try to quit, and it will become thought low-class to be a pot-smoker, as has happened today with cigarettes.

–Lynne Diligent

Do Cat Thieves Give Clues to the Origins of Criminality in Humans?

Here in  North Africa, I watch the neighborhood animals, who belong to no one, and make their rounds in the same places daily.  We have a lot of street animals, and cats often jump in to our house through the windows (other people’s houses, too), in search of food. Some of them can get quite aggressive, especially with our own cats.  Our cats feel they have to go outside and “defend the yard” every time they see a cat jump in over the garden wall.  Of course they go absolutely wild if a neighborhood cat jumps into our house.

I began to think about these intruders as thieves, because that’s what they would be considered, if they were humans. It’s easier for them to steal food than it is for them to hunt for it themselves in an urban environment.

It’s also easier (than working) for human thieves to do the same–either because they are lazy, or their environment didn’t give them other reasonable options, or because they are more greedy than others (white collar criminals?). I wonder how much of this laziness/greediness could be genetically determined, or if it is somewhat genetically programmed into all of us.  In fact, scientists are now finding evidence of this (see HERE and HERE).

My observation of cats in the neighborhood has lead me wonder whether ALL cats would be thieves if they weren’t fed by their owners.

Therefore, what keeps ALL humans from becoming thieves? Rather than asking the question who is likely to become a criminal (in human society), perhaps we should seek to understand this question  by asking instead, what KEEPS people from taking the easy route of becoming a thief/criminal? Instead of asking who cheats and why, maybe we should be asking, “Why doesn’t EVERYONE cheating/lying/stealing? What keeps those of us who are law-abiding citizens, so?”

I wonder if the answer lies in the environment.  Instead of saying that the environment causes criminality, perhaps the reverse is actually closer to the truth.  Perhaps we would all be criminals, except for if we have a positive environment which, as we are raised, gives us POSITIVE REWARDS (such as RESPECT or ADMIRATION) for becoming law-abiding citizens.  Those who grow up in impoverished environments (or cultural environments) where they never experience these rewards, are unlikely to become honest and law-abiding.

What do others think?