While this column was being written, edited and published, many students were indulging in smoking marijuana recreationally, most likely in private settings. With April 20 at hand, many students will especially be participating in this because if you didn’t already know, it’s a bit of a holiday for those consumers which is celebrated by, you guessed it, smoking weed. I inquire to readers, smokers and non-smokers alike, a question asked many times before with the purpose of creating a conversation and rhetoric that can help envision not only a campus but a nation with legalized marijuana: what’s all the fuss about?

I hate weed. I hate the smell of it around me, I hate that murderous cartels in Mexico and South America profit off of America’s users and I definitely don’t like smoking it or consuming it in any form, for that matter. However, I have and have had many friends whom I love dearly who have smoked for quite a while, and through them I have been able to understand why they do it and what people who smoke are really like. The shocking revelation was that they’re as normal as can be. Through the years, I have failed to see the reason for legislation that prevents someone from sitting on a couch and smoking but allows people to drink excessively and, in turn, give them the chance to drive drunk and kill someone.

I believe it’s a shame that we have a president who chose Jeff Sessions as attorney general, who encourages a war on drugs and said, “Good people don’t smoke marijuana.” Think about the sheer statistics alone: More than 22 million Americans used cannabis for various reasons in the last month, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. So, according to Sessions, 7 percent of America’s population are bad people. Alongside this, nearly half of Americans have said that they’ve tried marijuana before. It’s despicable that hard-working, honest students have encountered trouble interrupting them from their studies on and off-campus because of this.

I also believe it’s a shame that our nation dedicated efforts for decades, demonizing drugs and drug users to fill prisons disproportionately with low-income and marginalized people of color for nonviolent crimes, and making drug addiction a crime rather than a health issue. This serves as a springboard for conversations about how regulations on marijuana on our campus should change to be more lax, and to encourage students who feel it in themselves to take political action to speak to our legislators in efforts to decriminalize marijuana statewide. 

Many students seek intoxication as a form of relaxation, recreation and diversion from the stresses of academia and life in general. Our sidewalks are filled with students standing in clouds of cigarette smoke, and the walls of our parties are damp with alcohol. Both of these have been shown to more addictive than marijuana altogether, according to studies from the Harvard Medical School.

In order to challenge the restrictions at NC State on students’ consumption of marijuana, the restrictions placed statewide and on a federal level should be challenged as well because all the fuss about it is really pretty much nothing.