After an attempt to decriminalize statewide the adult possession of an ounce or less of marijuana failed at the polls in 2006, Mason Tvert, executive director of the drug policy reform organization Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation (SAFER) and his colleagues hit upon a new strategy: Focus energy on local campaigns such as city and campus pro-marijuana initiatives.

So far, the plan has worked like a charm. Nederland recently decriminalized marijuana, following in the footsteps of Breckenridge earlier this year and Denver before that. And now, SAFER has announced another victory: In a campus-wide election this past Tuesday and Wednesday, students at Fort Lewis College in Durango overwhelmingly passed a referendum calling on university marijuana penalties to be no greater than those for alcohol. The school is the third Colorado university to have passed such a measure, with University of Colorado-Boulder and Colorado State University leading the charge.

"It's another university where students have taken action and think it's time for change," says Tvert. "We saw this at CU and CSU, and now we're seeing it down in Durango. It's really part of a statewide movement."

COLUMBIA, MO (KBIA) - A group of University of Missouri students rallied on campus Thursday in support of bringing the school's marijuana policies in line with its alcohol policies. The university's chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws handed out fliers at Speaker's Circle and presented an initiative to MU Chancellor Brady Deaton.

The so-called Emerald Initiative calls for the university to equalize its marijuana policies with alcohol policies. The group's president Scott Lauher says marijuana and alcohol are the top two most popular recreational substances in college. As such, the university should not punish people more severely for using marijuana than alcohol.

"I just think we need a little sanity in our marijuana policies. Being involved with this, I've heard so many people who have been kicked out of the dorms, who have been arrested in the dorms for not much of a reason but for owning marijuana. Yet when I lived in dorms, the people who were causing problems were the people puking in the halls or urinating down the stairwells. Those were the drunk people."

The group also says the stiffer penalties for marijuana, but not alcohol, is pushing college students to drink dangerously. © Copyright 2010, KBIA