Marijuana offers users a chance to have great food, great sleep and the best sex of your life, according to the editor in chief of High Times magazine, Steven Hager.
But former drug enforcement agent Bob Stutman thinks differently.
‘The primary reason that most people in favor of marijuana use give has nothing to do with counterculture, hemp or medicine,’ he said. ‘You know what it is? ‘It’s my recreational drug of choice and I want to be able to use it when I want to be able to use it.’
Hager ‘ nicknamed ‘the most famous pothead in America’ ‘ and Stutman ‘ ‘the most famous narc in America’ ‘ duked out their views on the legalization of marijuana on campus Monday in a debate dubbed ‘Heads vs. Feds.’
The discussion, which drew more than 600 people to Lecture Hall 1, was sponsored by the Student Association Programming Board and Off Campus College Council. The event covered health, legal and cultural issues relating to the psychoactive drug and drew more people than could fit in the lecture hall, as organizers were forced to close the doors on incoming people at 8 p.m.
‘I knew it’d be popular,’ said Aaron Butler, insights chair of the SAPB. ‘But I didn’t think we’d actually have to turn people away.’
According to Hager, one reason for the legalization of marijuana is its health benefits. It’s a good and cheap medicine for diseases including AIDS, cancer and multiple sclerosis, he said.
‘I know people that can walk again because they use marijuana as medicine. I know people that can see again because they use marijuana as medicine,’ Hager said. ‘I know people that can live because they use marijuana as medicine.’
And since the health care system is run on a for-profit basis, Hager said, pharmaceutical companies refuse to allow legalization of marijuana because it would provide such accessible medicine for everyone and therefore decrease the companies’ revenues.
Stutman, who was a Drug Enforcement Administration agent for 25 years, countered Hager’s health argument.
Marijuana affects ability to judge depth perception and can therefore impair driving ability and cause more car accidents, he said. It also interferes with the ability to reason and to think logically.
Studies have shown it causes dependence for 13 percent of users and may bring mouth, throat or lung cancer, Stutman said. Marijuana cigarettes have a 25-year gestation period ‘ so the true effects of smoking may not become visible for years.
‘If these studies are right, some of you could come down with lung cancer in 25 years and you’ll say, ‘Why me?’ Stutman said. ‘And it could be because you used a drug when you had no idea what the side effects were.’
Hager also claimed that legalization would lead to reform of the industrial prison system.
According to Hager, when people are convicted of drug possession they face forfeiture, a legal term meaning that the government can take everything they own. Additionally, judges are constrained by mandatory minimum sentences in such cases, leading to large numbers of people being jailed. Prisoners convicted of armed robbery, rape or murder face neither forfeiture nor minimum sentences.
‘Building the biggest prison in the known world is not a hallmark of free society,’ Hager said.
In addition to environmental benefits and a decrease in corruption, legalization of marijuana would also allow cultures which depend on marijuana to practice their religion without prosecution, Hager said.
But Stutman disagreed.
‘I can do anything I want in the name of religion,’ he said. ‘Gee, I thought we learned that lesson after 9/11.’
Stutman also said that though 80 percent of college students are in favor of legalization, by the time they reach 35, 75 percent of them have changed their minds.
‘The day the majority of the American public wants marijuana made legal as a recreational drug, I think we should legalize it,’ Stutman said. ‘The problem is that right now, 82 percent of Americans don’t.’
For proponents of marijuana, Hager urged using the drug responsibly.
‘If you’re running off to do a breakfast bong and trying to take your calculus exam and you think you’re doing something for legalization, I’ve got a rude awakening for you,’ Hager said. ‘You are not part of the solution, you are the biggest part of the problem.’
Student Katie Richards found it hard to completely agree with either speaker because they were both ‘too extreme,’ she said.
‘I came in thinking legalizing was good, but [Stutman] brought up good points, so I have to think about it.’