To the Editor:

In answer to the question with which Suraj Rambhia leads off his “Reefer Madness” style editorial, people smoke pot for the same reason they use other mood-altering substances: they find it enjoyable. College IS a place to think, learn and live and that’s precisely why people want to experience things like marijuana.

Rambhia states that pot “wears down your brain.” Well, a good many of life’s pleasures cause some damage but who wants to live in a world where no one can do anything that might be hazardous? How much must one smoke to significantly “wear down” one’s brain? Who sponsored the study showing it does, and with what agenda?

The [opinion piece] goes on to say that students who get high or “something else illegal in their spare time” have bad grades and are failures in life. The writer also assumes that all pot smokers are “drug addicts,” whatever that means.

I really think [that] as Editor-in-Chief, Rambhia should get out a little more and learn something about his/her fellow students.

Anyway, there is a study that was done with high school students that showed those who used marijuana moderately were more successful both academically and socially than heavy pot smokers AND those who abstained completely. The key, of course, is avoiding excess.

I’ll tell you what I think when I read your police blotter and see the number of students “referred” for smoking pot: I wonder if they were behind closed doors or in a public place. I further ask myself whether the staff goes patrolling around looking for the scent of weed in the air and knocking on doors, which would be bad enough, or whether students “rat out” other students, which is even sleazier. If you’re looking for something indicative of our decline as a society look at the willingness to report people who are minding their own business and not hurting anyone.

You’d really think we were back in the 1950s. What’s next, a proposal to segregate dorms by sex?

Sincerely,

Chris Sorochin, Class of 1983