The Media Should Blame Outdated Laws, Not Marijuana When It Comes To College Athletes
I smoked as much marijuana in college as I could get in my lungs. Marijuana helped me cope with the seemingly never ending anxiety that goes along with attending college. There’s before the term getting classes in order, getting books, finding new classes for the ones that got cancelled for whatever reason. Students need a new parking pass, to meet with their faculty advisers, and the list goes on and on, and the classes haven’t even started yet.
Throw in pre-law classes, an overzealous professor, midterms, finals, and possible graduate/law school processes, it doesn’t take long before my head starts spinning thinking about it. This of course leads to almost no sleep, high stress, and burnout. There are many in the media that would say smoking marijuana is illegal, immoral, and intolerable, regardless of anything else. I would point out to them that I wouldn’t have been able to get through college had it not been for marijuana. I slept better, was able to relax my brain to keep it fit for the challenges ahead, and I felt much less stress than my fellow students that didn’t consume marijuana.
My fellow students relied on energy drinks, coffee, and pharmaceutical sleeping pills to get through the term. I have read several media reports today that would suggest marijuana is evil, and anything else is OK as long as it’s legal, regardless of if it’s effective and/or leads to health problems. Fox Sports is guilty of spreading this anti-marijuana propaganda. Here is an excerpt from their article titled, ‘Expert: TCU bust sign of pot problem’:
“National Center for Drug Free Sport vice president Andrea Wickerham said the arrests of four football players among 15 TCU students and four former students on suspicion of selling marijuana is symbolic of an increasing pot problem in college athletics.”
I think the premise of the ‘expert’ is wrong, making her entire argument ludicrous. Is marijuana by itself a problem? If it’s marijuana with other drugs, or marijuana with violence, or marijuana with something that hurts society, than I could understand. But simple marijuana possession, consumption, and minor distribution harms no one. Marijuana by itself is not a problem. Marijuana by itself is not wrong. What’s wrong is the outdated, unfounded, and harmful laws and policies that govern college campuses.
Many college athletes need marijuana far more than I did while I was in college. On top of all the things that I previously mentioned, college athletes also have to put their bodies through regular, intense physical stress, especially football players. This almost always leads to excessive use of pain killers, which are given out like water in college athletics. It blows my mind that a player can get injected with cartel grade painkillers, but if the same player used a topical cannabis gel to help with something like tendinitis, the player would be labeled a criminal. The college athlete would get reprimanded by the team, possibly get kicked out of school, and lose his or her financial aid, all for using a product that is much safer than anti-inflammatory pharmaceuticals and more effective. Marijuana is not a problem; marijuana laws and policies at America’s colleges are the problem.
Where’s the media articles talking about how big of a problem pharmaceuticals are on college campuses? Where’s the articles talking about how an entire generation of college students are getting hooked on pain pills and Adderall? Is the purpose of such articles to talk about real problems, or to highlight ridiculous ones while pretending that the real problems don’t exist? I consumed marijuana every day of my college life, and graduated with a 3.88 GPA in a very hard program. Meanwhile, I saw student after student drop out of college because the nasty substances they were using, a lot of times with the support of the school’s insurance, eventually wore off, and they would rather chase their fix than focus on school. I dream of a day where colleges focus on the real problems that they face on their campuses, instead of continuing a failed war against marijuana.
