April is Alcohol Awareness Month and I found it fitting in Tuesday’s issue of TNH to read an article explaining “drunken etiquette.” It got me thinking: nobody wants find themselves belligerently drunk in front of a UNH police officer, nobody wants to do something stupid that could endanger themselves or people around them but that’s what alcohol does.

Lowering inhibitions and forgetting the problems of the school week just for a night is what college students do best, but what if we could use a substance to “party” that would save us from being tackled on the spot for stumbling on that walk to Wildcat? What if we had a safer way to party that didn’t induce violence, sexual assault or property damage like alcohol does? According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism’s Task Force on College Drinking, each year the use of alcohol by college students contributes to approximately 1,700 student deaths, 600,000 unintentional student injuries, 695,000 assaults involving students, and 97,000 sexual assaults and date rapes involving students. Fortunately, use of cannabis has never been considered a factor in violent crime or sexual assaults.

Daniel Panzer said he tried everything to fight off his insomnia.

But the sleeping pills prescribed to the first-year chemistry student by his doctor were not working. Only medical marijuana, he said, would relax him and help him sleep.

However, the residence halls have a strict policy against its usage, even though Panzer had the necessary paperwork to prove he needed marijuana. He said he would sometimes have to walk to a friend’s apartment to smoke a joint and then walk back in order to fall asleep.

“I feel like a criminal sometimes for following the law,” Panzer, co-president of UCLA’s Students for Sensible Drug Policy, said. “It’s frustrating because I’m not doing anything wrong.”

Last Thursday was the first day of National Alcohol Awareness Month, and to mark the occasion, students on more than 80 college campuses across the country rallied last week to support marijuana as an alternative to alcohol, according to an April 1 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation — a national non-profit organization devoted to educating people on the relative safety of marijuana versus alcohol — organized the “Nationwide Day of Action” to promote marijuana as a safer alternative to alcohol.

According to the Chronicle, students who took part in the rallies asked their college presidents to sign the Emerald Initiative — a document promising “informed and dispassionate public debate” on marijuana use.

While 135 college presidents have signed the Amethyst Initiative — which calls for the drinking age to be lowered — none signed the Emerald Initiative when asked last Thursday, the Chronicle reported.