The majority of Colorado’s four-year public institutions requirestudents, with few exceptions, to live on-campus their first one or twoyears.  None of them allows medical marijuana cardholders to smokemarijuana in residence halls.

Mesa State College is one of those schools, requiring freshmen andsophomores under the age of 21 who don’t live with a parent or spousein Mesa County to live in a college residence hall.  In those halls,it’s against college policy to smoke or store marijuana, whether it’sused for medical reasons or not, according to John Marshall, thecollege’s vice president for student services.

“It’s simply not something we can accommodate,” he said.

Marijuana, tobacco, alcohol and nonprescription drugs are all bannedfrom Mesa State residence halls.  Medical marijuana is not addressedseparately from marijuana in general in the student housing guide, butMarshall said that would be remedied by the fall.

So far, no students have asked the college to be released from thefreshman and sophomore requirement to live on campus so they can use amedical marijuana card off-campus, Marshall said.  But some schoolshave experienced that, including the University of Colorado atBoulder.

CU Director of Residence Life Paula Bland said she is not sureexactly how many students at the school have asked to have theirhousing deposit returned so they can use medical marijuana.  But it hashappened a handful of times this year, she said.

“It’s probably more this year than it was last year.  Last year wejust started seeing students have medical marijuana cards,” she said.

Bland said all of the requests came midyear, when a student alreadyhad been living in a residence hall and wanted to move out.

Fort Lewis College spokesman Mitch Davis said he wouldn’t besurprised if the college received some requests from cardholders tolive off-campus, but so far that hasn’t happened.

Colorado State University spokesman Brad Bohlander and University ofNorthern Colorado spokesman Nate Haas said they haven’t heard of anystudents on their campuses asking to live off-campus to use medicalmarijuana.

As of Sept.  30, the average age of a medical marijuana patient was40, according to Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. The department reported at that time Mesa County had the 10th largestamount of cardholders in the state.

Source: Daily Sentinel, The (Grand Junction, CO)
Copyright: 2010 Cox Newspapers, Inc.
Contact: letters@gjds.com
Website: http://www.gjsentinel.com/
Author: Emily Anderson