Students argue alcohol worse than marijuana

UVM members of Students for Sensible Drug Policy joined in a national Drug Safety Awareness day last week to promote marijuana as a safer alternative to alcohol.

The organization in charge of the national campaign is called SAFER.

Based out of Denver, Colo., SAFER pushes for a national realization that marijuana is less harmful than alcohol, according to the organization's website.

"Obviously I'm not trying to force people to do any drug, but to make it a less biased choice because they really are the two most used substances, and marijuana is the safer of the two," junior and co-president for Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), Brendan Miller said.

The campaign stated that alcohol contributes to incredibly high numbers of overdose deaths, fights and injuries, sexual assaults and property damage, while marijuana contributes to none of these things.

"I'd like to see an equalization of punishments at the very least," Miller said.

Miller said they planned fairly last minute, but they still managed to reach a few dozen students enjoying the warm weather outside the Bailey/Howe Library.

"I agree with the idea completely," freshman Molly McLaughlin said.  "You hear about kids going to the hospital for drinking all the time, but never for smoking weed."

There will probably be a bigger event in the future, but so far no concrete plans had been made, Miller said.

"Public opinion is changing," he said. "The more support we have, [the more we] can get things done."

There is no SAFER group at UVM yet, but maybe the beginning of a UVM SAFER chapter would be one step in a progressive direction, Miller said.