Introduction About 15 years ago a student came to my office to gauge my opinion on marijuana legalization. This was long before the subject was popular, and marijuana was only legal for medical use in a few states. He was respond- ing to a flyer that I had posted outside my office that relayed some basic facts and statistics about the dangers of marijuana, alcohol abuse, and addiction. At that time, our campus experienced a surge of students who were failing their classes due to substance abuse problems, and I was trying to provide helpful information. I recall having to replace the flyer num- erous times. This student opened the conversation by talking about drinking and how many of his relatives (uncles and cousins) had serious problems with alcohol. After a few anecdotes, he gradually turned the conversation to marijuana and his general opinion that it was a safer habit than drinking. That semester especially, when so many of my promising students were being sidetracked and were failing due to their substance abuse issues, I was curious and asked him to tell me more. His tone became more excited as he explained that marijuana was very poorly understood and that it pro- moted imagination, mental acuity, and was safer than both alcohol and tobacco. He simply could not understand why anyone would be opposed to it. When I asked him how he formed these conclusions, he told me that he had been reading “a lot of information online” and that he was discov- ering so many facts that he had never known before. He added, “[N]o one
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