April is "Alcohol Awareness Month." Today, to mark the occasion, students on more than 80 campuses in 34 states held rallies to promote what they say is a safer alternative to alcohol: marijuana.

Mason Tvert is the executive director of a pro-marijuana group called "SAFER" (Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation), the group that organized today's rallies. In an interview, Tvert told the Chronicle for Higher Education he wanted students to think green next time they party: "It's not adding another vice. It's providing an alternative. A safer alternative. . . . Sobriety may be the safest alternative, but it's not a realistic alternative — at least for most students."

What do you do when you hold a protest rally and nobody comes?

If you’re Brendan Miller, you rally on.

Burlington’s news media converged on the University of Vermont campus Thursday in anticipation of a drug-and-alcohol-liberalization rally. What they encountered, however, was a demonstration of one — a single student who was prepared and pleased to hold forth in successive interviews.

LONGMONT — A couple of dozen Front Range Community College students gathered Thursday to support the idea that marijuana is a safer drug than alcohol.

The medical marijuana movement is “absolutely” a backdoor attempt to legalize marijuana, according Michael Lerner, the organizer of the Colorado Cannabis Convention that’s going on in Denver this weekend.

Lerner believes the current medical marijuana movement is nearly identical to the second phase of prohibition in which some people feigned ailments to get a doctor’s recommendation to drink booze. In 1929, there were 60,000 reported cases of snakebites Ń one of the ailments that doctors could recommend alcohol for. After alcohol became legal again in 1933, the number of reported snakebites declined dramatically, which Lerner doesn’t see as a coincidence.

“Remember the guy who claimed they had a snake bite in 1929 to be able to drink alcohol, a few years later was able to walk down the street and purchase (alcohol)?” he said. “That’s where we’re at.”

Yesterday may have been April Fool’s Day, but for NORML Terps, the university’s alcohol policy is hardly a joke.

In recognition National Alcohol Awareness Month, group members gathered outside the Main Administration Building, protesting what they believe to be a discrepancy between alcohol and marijuana policies at the university and nationwide.

“Currently, alcohol is seen as a Class B violation,” said Zach Brown, the president of NORML Terps. “If you’re caught with alcohol, it’s just a slap on the wrist. But with marijuana, you’re kicked out of housing.”

Believe it or not, this is not an April Fools' Day story.

In honor of National Alcohol Awareness Month, which starts today, students at more than 80 colleges across the country are urging their universities to allow them to use marijuana, rather than making them opt for the legal party substance, alcohol.

Students plan to distribute fliers comparing the relative harms of alcohol and pot, and carry signs and banners that read: "This is NOT a joke... Let us make the SAFER choice!"

Georgetown University students plan to protest at the law school. At the University of Maryland, students plan to hold a press conference in front of the university president's office.

"It might be April Fools' Day, but this is not a joke," said U-Md. student Zach Brown, president of the pro-pot group, NORML Terps, in a statement. "It's time we stop driving students to drink and let them make the rational, safer choice to use marijuana when they party."

The nationwide day of action was organized by Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation (SAFER), with the help of Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) and campus chapters of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).