A pack of students picketed Wescoe Beach Thursday as part of a nationwide effort to promote marijuana use as a safer alternative to alcohol.

More than 80 colleges and universities across the country recognized the day of action, which also marked the first day of National Alcohol Awareness Month.

The event was launched by Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation, a national non-profit organization founded in response to alcohol overdose deaths on college campuses.

“College life has become a large scale promotion of alcohol,” Jacob Bigus, a sophomore from Hillsdale and the University’s student coordinator for SAFER, said. “We feel that the University should be promoting safer alternatives to drinking — smoking marijuana being one — rather than just urging students to drink responsibly.”

According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism’s Task Force on College Drinking, alcohol use by college students leads to approximately 1,700 deaths; 600,000 unintentional injuries; 695,000 assaults and 97,000 sexual assaults and date rapes for students each year.

The US Department of Education lists marijuana use as a close second to alcohol among college students on its website, saying that frequent use of either substance can lead to poor school performance.

Jane Tuttle, assistant vice provost for Student Success, said that both marijuana and alcohol consumption are against the University’s Alcohol and Drugs Policy and that each violation is judged individually.

Members of Students for Sensible Drug Policy and the campus chapter of the National Organization for the Reformation of Marijuana Laws teamed up for the event, proclaiming that the University enforces marijuana laws more severely, causing students to choose the more dangerous booze before buds.

“The alcohol policy right now is steering kids towards drinking,” Thomas Deacon, a freshman from West Lafayette, Ind., and president of the University’s NORML chapter, said. “We’re just trying to keep students safe and expand rights.”

After they were through picketing, the group marched to the Union to hand the Student Senate the book “Marijuana is Safer: So why are we driving people to drink?”

The picketers also distributed copies of the “Emerald Initiative,” a response to the Amethyst Initiative which calls for a public debate on whether lowering the drinking age to 18 would reduce dangerous drinking on campuses.

“All we’re doing with the Emerald Initiative is asking for the same type of open debate about whether allowing marijuana use by students would result in fewer negative incidences with alcohol,” said Mason Tvert, executive director of SAFER.

The “Emerald Initiative” was sent out to the some 130 college presidents and chancellors who signed the Amethyst Initiative, but none have agreed to endorse it so far.

Although the Student Senate won’t take action on the initiative this year, Bigus said he was organizing debate sessions and planning a concert to take place this spring.