Weed smoking on Campus
Weed smoking. The oldest university in British Columbia is planning to create marijuana smoking areas on the school campus. The choice was made at the time when universities all over Canada are debating on how they should handle the use of cannabis within students when the nation’s recreational market launches on Oct. 17.
Adults between the ages of 18 and 34 account for Twenty-four percent of cannabis users in Canada. According to recent data, in the United States, the largest percentage of marijuana consumers are also young adults aged 18 to 29.
The associate vice president of human resources at the University of Victoria, Kane Kilbey, told the Vancouver Sun that the high amount of students who smoke weed has played an important role in the decision of the school to establish secure areas for weed smoking on campus.
The decision is only the beginning part of a larger discussion which will deal with how to offer education and access for university students who like to smoke cannabis while respecting students who don’t like cannabis. In January, a roundtable discussion was held by the Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy at the University of British Columbia to suggest knowledgeable cannabis policies at Canadian universities. As a result, the undergraduate and graduate students, aged 18 to 40, stated that university cannabis policies should not be different to off-campus cannabis policies to respect the right of the campus community without discrimination.
The recommendations entail that individuals aged 18 and above (or 19, in some provinces) should be allowed to buy cannabis on campus, similar to the way they buy alcohol, and recreationally use it as far as the smoke doesn’t irritate non-cannabis smokers. Moreover, Canadian universities have to nuance policies that play a role in the various methods of marijuana consumption such as edibles and vaping, so as to accommodate students with medical needs.
Currently, U.S Colleges have few areas that support medical cannabis patients. Few campuses like the University of Denver which is found in a state where recreational marijuana is legal, have prohibited the use of cannabis in dormitories because they receive funding from the federal government. In June, the biggest universities in Oklahoma banned cannabis due to the legalization of medical marijuana in the state. A college student at Arizona State University sued the school because he got arrested on campus for legally using medical cannabis, victoriously decriminalizing medical cannabis on college campuses in Arizona State.
Although Canada has legalized cannabis, most universities nationwide have made a decision to ban it. Cannabis was banned in Langara College Vancouver ahead of last spring’s legalization. Various universities like Edmonton’s Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, the University of New Brunswick, and Dalhousie University have also banned cannabis.
The University of British Columbia, York University, and MacEwan University are still to declare the final statements on cannabis.
Kilbey told the Vancouver Sun that the University of Victoria is an outlier in both Canada and the U.S. and they both follow the lead of the Federal Government. He added that the Canadian government has declared that the legality of cannabis will similar to beer and wine in October and the university plans to implement it.
