“I will admit that smoking marijuana is bad for your lungs,” said Christopher Pezza, president of the FRCC chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy. 

But people who smoke marijuana aren’t as likely as alcohol drinkers to engage in dangerous behavior, he said.

College students’ alcohol consumption leads to 1,700 deaths, 600,000 injuries, 695,000 assaults and 97,000 sexual assaults, according to a study published in the 2005 Annual Review of Public Health.

There are no comparable statistics for marijuana consumption, Pezza said. An Internet search did not find such statistics, either.

Pezza and other members of the student group delivered to FRCC’s vice president a copy of the Emerald Initiative, which asks college presidents to debate whether freer use of marijuana would reduce the incidence of dangerous drinking.

The initiative is sponsored by Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation, a nonprofit organization that advocates the position that marijuana is safer than alcohol.

John Feeley, spokesman for FRCC, said college officials would look at the initiative, which he was not familiar with.

Students for Sensible Drug Policy “neither encourages nor condemns drug use,” according to its Web site.

“I by no means want people using drugs on this campus. It’s foolish,” Pezza said.