Pot at Penn State

How do students get around smoking marijuana at Penn State?
Outside of East Halls, six people are smoking hookah that is laced with marijuana. There are seven guys and girls, all laughing together and enjoying the cool night. They pass around the four pipes, sharing with one another. I hear them talking about how it is laced with tobacco to cover up the smell of pot. From what I can hear, it sounds like the mixture tastes like tobacco but works at getting you high like marijuana. A girl complains about the smoke tasting like a cigarette instead of like weed. One guy starts up about having to clean out the hookah, and they all laugh. The group argues over what is better: smoking out of a hookah or smoking out of a bong. Apparently the weed burns too fast in a hookah for their liking. Someone else begins to groan about how they would rather have their money be used for smoking out of a pipe or a bong rather than out of a hookah. On the seventh floor of my dorm, laughter is heard from a room down the hall, obviously filled with many people. Voices of both men and women are present, and one can see that towels are stuffed under the door. The reason? Marijuana.
My good friend Kaitlin, a freshman from West, says that when she smokes marijuana in her room she uses either a hookah or her friend’s bong. They are all engineers so they get together and do homework and then smoke weed at around 1am. She says, “We put a fan in each window and a towel at the bottom of the door and a plastic bag over the smoke detector.” Kim, a first year student who lives in my building, says “pot is used widely among first year students at Penn State. It’s surprising to me that it’s used not only on weekends, but also on weeknights to alleviate the stress associated with school.” Curtis, also a freshman, says that “I came from a high school where weed us is equal with alcohol use,
so here it's not as big of a deal. It's definitely there for those who want it, they just have to seek it out and do a bit of looking and they can have access or find other people to smoke with. I don't really think it's a huge problem as other places probably. Alcohol’s the main choice of this place, and probably will be. As far as it happening on my floor...a few rooms do and it has caused a smell that extends down the hall.”
After doing some research online, I have found that there have been many occurrences of reported marijuana use by Penn State students. It has led me to believe that I should investigate this further and I should travel to the State College Police Department and obtain some statistics regarding weed at Penn State. Kim’s quote gave me the idea of investigating why students at Penn State feel that it is necessary to smoke. Are they stressed out? Are they hoping to gain social approval by doing it? What harder majors more likely to use marijuana?
Through my research, I have discovered that Penn State has a Marijuana Intervention Program. Here, students who have been found in possession of marijuana are mandated to attend sessions with a staff member. Students who have not been convicted of marijuana use but who wish to get help may check themselves in for a self-referral at this program (http://studentaffairs.psu.edu/health/mip/). A friend, Simon, age 18, told me that he saw a circle of guys outside East Halls, all smoking cigarettes. After passing them, he smelled marijuana and realized that as they were all holding their cigarettes, they passed a joint around. People do it out in the open. A site dedicated to marijuana addiction states that “A yearly survey of students in grades 8 through 12 shows that 23 percent of 8th-graders have tried marijuana at least once. By 10th grade, 21 percent are "current" users (that is, used within the past month). Among 12th-graders, nearly 50 percent have tried marijuana/hash at least once and about 24 percent were current users. Other researchers have found that use of marijuana and other drugs usually peaks in the late teens and early twenties, then declines in later years.” (http://www.marijuana-addiction.info/Marijuana_Statistics.htm). This shows the onset of weed usage and how most college students are very experienced by the time they arrive for their first year away at school. As far as legalizing marijuana, some people say that the drug is of no harm to people. One website states that “the overwhelming majority of those charged with marijuana violations in 2000– 646,042 Americans (88 %) — were for simple possession. The remaining 12% (88,456 Americans) were for “sale/manufacture”, an FBI category which includes marijuana grown for personal use or purely medical purposes. These new FBI statistics indicate that one marijuana smoker is arrested every 45 seconds in America. Taken together, the total number of marijuana arrests for 2000 far exceeded the combined number of arrests for violent crimes, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault” (http://legalizationofmarijuana.com/). More research will help me to incorporate statistics into my investigative report.