Personally, I don’t care too much one way or the other if weed is legalized. It’s just not something I do much anymore.
However, I do care if perfectly good students at our university are losing financial aid over a bag of pot.
If any of you have checked your UVM email account since exams finished, you found a pleasant little email from student financial services reminding you that any student caught in possession of or selling illegal drugs will lose financial aid for at least one year.
When I think of illegal drugs, I think of crack, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, and meth — but weed, mmm not so much.
The fact that this edict would apply to possessing marijuana poses a big problem for any judicial system that claims to be fair and just.
Sure, smoking weed might make you lazy; you’ll definitely waste enough money to make you cry, and you’ll probably eat too much chinese food — but smoking weed is no heinous crime against society. Stupid? Maybe: it depends who you are, but illegal — come on we all have better things to do.
Plus, if someone is smoking enough weed to get caught, what’s going to help counter his habit is education and responsibility. (News Flash!) taking away an individual’s education will be way worse for society than letting him smoke weed.
Who’s going to be a bigger burden on society the college graduate that smokes weed after work, or the bum that is jobless (probably selling weed) because he lost his financial aid and dropped out? Even the stoned kid playing Halo in Tuper 4 knows the answer to that one.
Whether weed is legal or not people are going to smoke it if they want to; it is only problem when we introduce statutes like this where the punishment does not fit the crime.
