Unfortunately some students lose sense of what should be and what is important in their life. However addiction pushes people to poor choices. Many will start a risky behavior w/o realizing the short term and long term consequences @robbietoy . Also there are parents out there that are out of touch, however addicts can be very cunning in keeping a secret life and a good facade. Some addicts have the most charming and people pleasing superficial behaviors.
Using drugs =/= addiction. Not being completely familiar with the Wesleyan story I can’t say whether any of the students had a substance dependence, but it is possible for students to use drugs without being/becoming addicted to them. When I worked in residence life, we had lots of kids on campus who either occasionally or even regularly used drugs without developing a dependence disorder.
I also want to comment that using drugs cannot “bump up” or change someone’s psychiatric disorder from a personality disorder to schizophrenia. That is not how mental illness works. Many people with schizophrenia do have a comorbid substance use disorder, but the drugs don’t cause the schizophrenia - in fact, more often, the schizophrenia probably causes or influences the drug use.
I have worked in psych nursing in a number of clinical settings and I disagree with you @juilet . Young people are too trusting. It is very naive to think that everything is great no matter how little you know about what you are buying off the street. Overdoses happen unintentionally all the time. And just like prescribed psych drugs can work to help people with psych disorders, the chemical changes in the brain and the temp or longer lasting effect on the person that has ingested the drugs. What do you think about LSD and having a ‘bad trip’? You have never heard of someone having permanent mental issues from drug use/abuse? The brain is still the one area that medical science does not know as much as other body systems.
Using drugs is contraindicated when you are trying to do well in college. And you have no way of knowing someone’s dependence on drugs even as a residence life employee.
I got the impression Wesleyan tried to keep the ‘recreational use’ w/o police involvement, but obviously that wasn’t working.
Obama smoked weed in college. Imagine what he could have accomplished if he didn’t. What wasted potential. /s
@SOSConcern you seem to have a clear bias/agenda against this sort of thing.
@ooohcollege - I don’t think that’s a fair example; for every POTUS with a history with weed, there are millions of people who smoke weed that will never become POTUS. I don’t think @SOSConcern is trying to argue that marijuana will inevitably lead to a life of destitution and vagrancy; just that any recreational drug use has side effects that may function as a detriment in one’s education. It might not even be a neurological/psychological aspect per se; just that smoking marijuana in substance-free dormitories increases your risk of getting in trouble for marijuana possession.
@preamble1776 SOS made no such point. They are taking opinions and hearsay and presenting it as fact. They are obviously against the recreational use of this but honestly other people’s business is none of SOS’s.
@SOSConcern
That’s based on some confusing wording in one of the wire service articles. The reality is that every time drugs are found as the result of a routine search at Wesleyan, the local police are contacted. Whether the student involved is arrested after that is likely dependent on a variety of factors, including the seriousness of the offense. The overwhelming majority of calls to the Middletown Police Department involve the discovery of pot in a student dorm. I don’t know of a single other selective LAC that wastes local police resources to the same extent Wesleyan does.
@circuitrider - well the drug incident at Wesleyan that ‘blew up’ was with Molly distribution and use, not Marijuana. Maybe they came down on all of it, but where do you draw the line with illegal drug sale/distribution?
Anyone can tell you that most addicted drug users start with Marijuana or prescription drug use leading to abuse. Yes, some don’t go on to other drugs, and some purchase ‘pure’ Marijuana, but you don’t know since most are in states where Marijuana is illegal.
I would rather see an under 21 student having a few alcoholic drinks versus illegal drug use. Many campuses handle alcohol a bit differently too, lesser problems for involved student unless there was some kind of altercation.
Just an additional comment - one of my DDs attends a state flagship. Every so often there is a big drug raid/bust - on and off campus maybe once or twice a year, where they serve out the warrants at like 3 am so they pretty much can catch everyone at ‘home’. They have to do this I believe because they have a big student body of entry freshman and transfer students, so drug distributors are drawn to a big campus so they can make money with new customers. I know a Marijuana using student that got arrested (he was able to continue school, but did have to deal with the legal issues off campus and whatever discipline on campus). I feel bad for the parents because the extra legal costs were a bit of a hardship for them. Another parent on campus one day saw some handcuffed young people along with the ‘lunch box’ that held the drugs - obviously were caught distributing illegal substances. One student in a suite had a raid this school year with his suite-mate selling and distributing ‘speed’ - ADHD type of drugs bought by prescription by him and others, and he was selling - the room-mates had no idea, but the police told them what the warrant was for (the police knocked hard on the suite entry door, but would have broken it down to execute the warrant).
Uppers and downers have been around for ages, but some find that they use a substance and then can’t sleep so they need to take another drug to counteract the first. I had a co-worker that was abusing speed, and stole Valium from work (psych hospital) since he hadn’t slept in 3 days. Of course our drug count with shift change lead to identification of the drug thief.
Except underage students aren’t just having a few drinks, they’re having 5 or more (usually much more).
The gateway theory has been debunked numerous times and is especially false in states where marijuana is legal, meaning that most buyers for underage people only distribute weed. Also, most people start or with alcohol, not weed.
SOS is just afraid of the reefer madness
Hey, some students - HS, college, or other young adults may be binge drinking and then are very intoxicated. This is a worse problem in some campuses and some regions/states than others (this is being followed and the information can be helpful to ‘inform’ parents and students) - and hopefully at student/parent orientation time at least some kind of a ‘head’s up’.
An underage student may choose to only ‘nurse’ a drink. Not every party has everyone totally inebriated.
I think there are very few than never have an alcoholic drink - there are some people of certain faiths that won’t drink. So saying one starts with alcohol - well abusing alcohol or illegal drugs, abuse is abuse.
Many do not realize how important it is to ‘protect’ their brain. Important brain development is going on during teen years and 20’s. Addictions in teen years (or earlier), be it cigarettes, gambling, alcohol, progressive illegal drug use or prescription drug abuse - is super harmful short and long term. That is important for people to grasp.
Do people that smoke weed - what do they think it is doing to their lungs? What about the Hookah inhaled?
I think @SOSConcern brings up a really important point about age and brain development. Certain habits that may not necessarily be all that destructive when someone is 30 years old can be quite damaging when they’re a teenager. Binge drinking (which is common amongst underaged drinkers) increases the risk of later alcohol dependence 4x for those who begin drinking before the age of 15. So perhaps in a vacuum, marijuana and alcohol may be relatively innocuous (questionable…), you have to consider it within the context of how it is impairing a brain that hasn’t finished “growing.”
I still find it hilarious that people think alcohol and weed are on the same tier simply because of relative legality. Here’s an interesting study.
http://rt.com/usa/234903-marijuana-safer-alcohol-deadly/
While I think that number is slightly exaggerated, I think most people who have used both would agree. People take current law as fact too often. There’s a reason we change laws daily.
@pengsphils this is typical human intake and toxic dose - yes we know smoking pure Marijuana - at typical intake won’t kill you!
The main thing to remember is many/most states Marijuana is still illegal. So you can get arrested and face financial costs and inconvenience to life and possible school discipline.
You may not think Marijuana causes any physical harm to you. I know there are studies about lung damage - may not be as bad as cigarettes (most cigarette smokers inhale a lot more cigarette smoke a day than Marijuana smoke).
We know alcohol use does kill brain cells, but small amounts of alcohol on adult brain doesn’t seem to have significant consequences unless one has a medical condition which may be exacerbated, or is on specific medication where alcohol is contra-indicated.
Just need to examine the ‘benefits’ and drawbacks to anything you do. Will it help you get to where you are wanting to go in life?
Many want to believe Marijuana use affect on the brain will be inconsequential. We can agree to disagree.
So live in the states where Marijuana is legal or risk the financial costs and inconvenience to life if arrested or facing university discipline.
My bad for the ambiguity, but I didn’t mean to claim that either was safe for long term consumption. Anything taken consistently over an extended time will have a bodily effects, even fatty foods :)) . I didn’t claim nor do I think that marijuana doesn’t cause any harm.
The point was that people will use both, and in terms of immediate deaths (not to mention related deaths), alcohol takes the cake easily. Yes, both do harm long term with extended use, but that’s an individual choice. I don’t disagree with anything in your last post.
“I would rather see an under 21 student having a few alcoholic drinks versus illegal drug use.”
That is where I would disagree. One is much more likely to end in mortality, at least concerning marijuana exclusively. At least under the exclusion of legal consequences. I’m not arguing its a better situation under today’s laws. I’m arguing it should be a better one based on responsibility/risk. Essentially its a legalization argument.
What shapes the idea of weed as a “gateway drug”, an outdated idea as it is, is law. If people are willing to defy law for it, then they are probably self selecting themselves to be more likely to defy another. After all, there’s not much of a legal difference at that point right?
Switch the legality of alcohol and weed and exclude those already practicing use of alcohol, and I would be willing to bet alcohol would become the gateway drug.
The reason the gateway idea is outdated is due to social change. The laws are beginning to catch up, and it would reverse if we didn’t already have others used to alcohol. See prohibition.
I would suspect that in 10-15 years the punishment for underage smoking will be same as underage drinking.
Smoking has terrible life consequences as far as health - also financial consequences (higher cost of insurance, additional medical expenses). Cigarettes have many chemicals in them that make them addictive in addition to the nicotine. Alcohol/wine in moderation at age appropriate is fine by my standards.
Marijuana (or even Hookah) is not my idea of a wise thing. In states where Marijuana is legal, well parents have to take it up within their family.
Students do realize that alcohol to excess is not a good thing. And yes there are kids that die of alcohol poisoning or vomiting/aspiration/choking while inebriated.
My older DD just turned 21. We have allowed both our DDs to have wine with our meals at festive occasions (Thanksgiving, Christmas) and maybe even a beer with their dad. My parents are from a European country. Zero tolerance for drinking and driving, but wine with meals is common, beer drinking. I believe they understand how to consume responsibly.
Kids that sneak smoking, drinking, sex, illegal drugs, gambling etc in middle school/high school, or start heavy behavior in college when they have ‘freedom’ - that is where judgment is needed. Frontal brain is the last to develop. Many do not allow themselves to develop to their full potential, which is very sad. Climb into bad addictive behaviors. Same can be said for behavioral problems like eating disorders.
Two recent books “The Teenage Brain” by Frances Jensen, and “The Brain’s Way of Healing” by Norman Doidge.
On the first, this neuroscientist uses current research data to show how the unique architecture of the adolescent brain makes teens open to new information but susceptible to mood swings and poor judgment, and goes into addiction risk.
The second is by a psychiatrist with breakthrough therapies that tap unexpected neural pathways.