While our panel gets into gear, here’s an example of what you can expect. You may be shocked or not surprised at all. But you’ll be tuned in. This month’s focus is drugs, and this week’s subject is weed. (If you say pot, you’re “old.”) Coming next: cocaine, pharmaceuticals, drinking, and cigarettes.
Here’s the question posed to a few guys from schools in different parts of the country and who have very different philosophies about studying, relationships and life after college. Yet here, they are surprisingly in synch.
Question: What’s really going on with drugs on campus?”
Answer:
The 60’s and 70’s are over. Kids generally are very informed about the harm and risk of drug use. They approach drugs with enthusiastic caution. Drinking to excess and weed have become standard operating procedure for people who “go out” but in general people are responsible with the more intense stuff. They view their drug-taking career as something that will end; they have an accurate perspective of risks the different drugs pose; and they know what effects they’ll enjoy and which they won’t.
Of the “go-outers,” a vast majority smoke weed frequently (i.e. more than once a week), and a sizable minority of guys will smoke weed everyday, numerous times a day. Many guys who enjoy smoking weed, and some girls as well, will go through a phase where they are high from dinner time onward, every day. These phases can happen in high school or college and may last a lifetime for a very, very small percentage while most get over it in a year or two. It depends on who’s surrounding you.
Get one thing straight, weed is addictive, but it isn’t necessarily harmful. Lots of people function better while stoned than not. It’s an anti-anxiety like Xanax but definitely healthier. Even the heaviest weed smokers find the drug easy to quit when their living situation changes: whether it’s spending a lot of time with a girlfriend who doesn’t smoke or living somewhere where there isn’t a lot of weed.
Next week kids talk more. If you have specific questions send them to college@snoety.com or send them in through the comment box below.
xxx
