The Network Addressing Collegiate Alcohol and Other Drug Issues

A report produced by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (Males, 2012) analyzes California data on youth arrests.  There are two obvious trends: (1) youth arrests have been declining since the 1970's, and (2) marijuana arrests have plunged (61%) in the past year.  Of interest here is the second finding since it directly corresponds to the change in California law making simple possession an infraction instead of a misdemeanor, even for those under 18.  As we noted when the law was enacted, this means holding a bag of marijuana is now a lesser offense for a 17-year-old than holding a can of beer.

Colleges in Massachusetts now join us California schools in our legal limbo status between the state and federal government.  All of us must follow the Federal Drug Free Schools and Community Act requirement of maintaining strict policies against the use and possession of illegal drugs; illegal drugs includes, under Federal law, marijuana.  So as far as I know, all schools have interpreted the legal environment to mean that state laws allowing marijuana are irrelevant.  Students may think they can smoke pot because they have a medical excuse, but on campus they can't.  19 states and the District of Columbia now have medical use.

Washington and Colorado went a step further by legalizing non-medical use.  Presumably the legal opinions for campuses there will remain the same: Campuses will still need to forbid marijuana. 

According to a summary of the Youth Risk Behavior Survey presented by CESAR, over the past 20 years there has been a substantial decline in the number of high school students who first tried alcohol before age 13. In 1991, 33% reported pre-teen use, while that number has now declined to 21%.  That's very encouraging news since early use has been linked to later dependence development (Spear, 2002). Early cigarette use also dropped dramatically from 24% to 10% over that period.  The good news ends with that however, as marijuana early use remained relatively stable at about 8%.

Back at the end of 2010, the much heralded announcement came that the DEA was banning the chemicals found to be giving “Spice” and other herbal smokes their marijuana-like properties. Thus, it was expected that the herbal smokes would fall into the nether regions of the drug world and disappear from the internet and smoke shops of the U.S..

But a quick Google search or stroll to a local strip mall will provide ample evidence that herbal smokes are alive and well. Indeed, campuses are reporting that synthetic marijuana is showing up in a substantial number of student conduct issues. Further, the Monitoring The Future project (Johnston, O’Malley, Bachman, & Schulenberg, 2011) reports that synthetic marijuana was the third