For parents with soon-to-be high school graduates about to head off to college this fall, the weeks ahead are fraught with danger. Graduation night itself, lazy summer months, and that first year away at college are alcohol-soaked minefields for students and the stuff of nightmares for parents.

Kids 18 to 20 years of age (do we still call them kids when they can vote, enter into legally binding contracts, marry, adopt children and enlist in the armed forces?) are prohibited from legally drinking alcohol in this country. States set their own legal drinking age until 1984 when President Ronald Reagan authorized the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which effectively established a minimum drinking age of 21.

Poll: Growing support for legalization; med pot industry braces for likely regs

A leading marijuana-legalization activist believes a poll showing that almost half of Coloradans’ support legalizing and taxing marijuana is a “sign of things to come.”

Meanwhile, some medical marijuana activists are figuring out how to move forward following the Legislature’s passage of bills aimed at limiting the industry.

Mason Tvert of Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation (SAFER), a group dedicated to pointing out the ways they believe marijuana is safer than alcohol, believes the Rasmussen poll released last week showing that 49 percent of the state’s voters support legalizing marijuana is proof that marijuana legalization will happen in the foreseeable future. 

“Right now, the percentage of Coloradans who support legalizing and regulating marijuana is above the support voters have right now for one governor candidate,” he said. “Whose fringe now?”

Russ Belville of NORML has a great piece posted on the NORML Stash Blog regarding the University of Notre Dame's hypocritical approach to marijuana and alcohol, particularly in light of a football player being busted for marijuana and a recent alcohol-related death involving a recruit. 

An excerpt is below or you can CLICK HERE to read the entire piece:

If you are under the age of 21, both alcohol and marijuana are drugs that are illegal for you to possess and use.  But only one of them is celebrated in our culture, considered a normal part of “growing up”, and leads to countless student sexual assaults, violence, and the occasional death...

...Y’know, college kids just naturally engage in illegal drinking, it’s what college kids do.  Sure, some of ‘em die from drinking games, keg stands, and beer bongs, so why is it even an issue?  But if the football player is caught smoking a cannabis bong…?