SAFER launched the SAFER Campuses Initiative earlier this month, just as students at two major universities were voting in favor of SAFER Campus Referendums and college presidents nationwide were receiving information about the "Emerald Initiative" -- our latest project, which is designed to spark a major national debate about the relative safety of marijuana compared to alcohol and the insanity of laws and policies that steer people away from marijuana and toward drinking.
 
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Students adopt SAFER Referendums

This month, Purdue University and the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville became the latest colleges to adopt SAFER Referenda, calling on their schools to reduce university penalties for marijuana use so that they are no greater than those for alcohol use. This brings the total number of schools to adopt SAFER measures to 13 (including at least six of the 15 largest schools in the nation). SAFER worked closely with the Purdue and U of A chapters of NORML, who have already engaged in promising meetings with administrators regarding potential changes to campus policies.

Like past SAFER Campus campaigns, the Purdue and U of A efforts received substantial news coverage, including great stories in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette (the state's largest newspaper) and the Lafayette Journal & Courier, and segments on several TV news channels and programs.

The Emerald Initiative unveiled

The Emerald Initiative is SAFER's response to the "Amethyst Initiative" -- a highly publicized call for "informed and dispassionate public debate" on lowering the legal drinking age (as a means for curbing binge drinking among college students), which has been endorsed by 130+ college presidents and chancellors around the nation. The Emerald Initiative calls on these same university leaders to endorse a similar statement in support of "informed and dispassionate public debate" on whether allowing students to use marijuana more freely could reduce dangerous drinking on and around college campuses.

The effort has already received attention from the media, including a great piece in Inside Higher Ed and coverage in the newspapers of various colleges, such as Princeton and UPenn. The Emerald Initiative will serve as a centerpiece for the SAFER Campuses Initiative alongside the growing number of schools taking up SAFER referendums and resolutions.

Sparking a much-needed debate

SAFER's message -- that marijuana is safer than alcohol, and people should not be driven to drink -- is quickly becoming a part of the college drinking debate. Earlier this month, SAFER Executive Director Mason Tvert traveled to the University of Kansas, the site of a recent student alcohol overdose death, where he participated in a high-profile panel regarding binge drinking and efforts to address it. SAFER assisted the Drug Policy Forum of Kansas in organizing the alcohol awareness event, which featured a screening of "Death By Alcohol: The Sam Spady Story," followed by a panel featuring Tvert along with KU's Vice Provost responsible for alcohol-related programs, a representative of the KU Public Safety Office, a professor of preventive medicine from the KU Medical Center, and the head of the Kansas Licensed Beverage Association. The event was covered by local and campus news outlets.

The event at KU is just one example of how SAFER's campus presence is expanding nationwide. Showings of "Death By Alcohol" paired with discussions involving SAFER were also held this month at the University of Colorado at Boulder (concurrently with the Conference on World Affairs) and at Colorado State University, where the panel included several of the CSU staff members responsible for alcohol- and drug-related issues and legal affairs. Tvert also visited and spoke at several other colleges this spring, including the University of Missouri, William Paterson University in New Jersey, and his alma mater, the University of Richmond in Virginia.