"I am only high because my doctor said it was OK"-College Campus Problems for Medical Marijuana Purposes

The biggest phenomenon in legalizing drugs is the talk about marijuana. Marijuana has been around for generations, however in the past decade, talk for legalizing it for medical purposes have gotten extremely popular. I believe that 14 states have passed it legal for medical purposes only. I also believe that soon in the near future there will be a state in which legalizes it for everyone. Until that day gets here, higher education administrators have to consider other problems relating to marijuana usage with their students.

I know that Mississippi has not passed a law to legalize marijuana for medical purposes but there are colleges where this has happened. The question I want to ask is…what happens when a student lives within the dorms and has a doctor’s prescribed notice stating that they can use marijuana for medical purposes? How do college administrators react to this? What is the right thing to do? If you put it in this scenario, doctors prescribe Ritalin for students who have ADD. This drug is abused on campuses all the time. This scenario is very similar to the student who brings marijuana onto campus. College administrators cannot band the student to use marijuana for medical purposes just like they can’t band students for using Ritalin. They can however band students who misuse prescription drugs.
If they allow this student with medical prescribed marijuana to live on campus, how do they protect the medicine? I know other students will try to get some of this “medicine”. Who knows how they will try? They could become violent, or the student will try to sell some. So many scenarios can happen with this problem.
I think that this isn’t something that higher Ed personnel should ignore; this is something that will happen today….something that is happening NOW. Colleges should be prepared on how to deal with students that are allowed to use marijuana.

After thinking about the above paragraphs, I decided to do some research.

Here is an article found in the Chronicle:
http://0-chronicle.com.umiss.lib.olemiss.edu/article/Your-Doctors-Advice-Notwit/62634/

This article is addressing the problem to the questions that I stated above. A student had a doctor’s note allowing the usage of marijuana for medical purposes. News quickly spread around campus and the area that a student was allowed to smoke on campus. This quickly came to an end when administrations caught wind of the word. They banded the student to live in the dorms but to live off campus and keep the medicine at home. At the very end of this article, Stephen Butler (vice president of student affairs at Humboldt college) stated, “Make rules that are more prohibitive than the state's rules. You can do that.” I don’t know if this is the right thing to do or not. This is a new area to consider but not far from every college’s future.

I decided to search this topic even more, and I found this article:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/SmallBiz/higher-learning-medical-marijuana-colleges-crop/story?id=9154672&page=2
Wow….who would have thought this day would have come. This is an article talking about a college who teaches students how to grow marijuana for medical purposes. There are different rules that the graduates are allowed to do legally, but if they move to California there are even more options for them.
I know that this isn’t really something that college administrators have to deal with, but I think it makes a point that this problem will be here sooner than you think. I am not sure if I can come up with a clear conclusion for what college campuses should do, but I think that it is something that we should start thinking about.