Letters to the Editor

Ambler Way drug bust brings drug laws into question

The biggest concern with drugs on campus is that kids can be arrested for doing something almost half of the people in their age group have done, along with roughly 40% of all Americans, a statistic that includes our last 3 presidents.

The drug laws in this country are a joke. They don't work to deter drug use. They only serve to clog our jails and courts, trash our civil liberties, and wreck the lives of otherwise law abiding citizens. This image of drug users as somehow being abnormal has to be buried once and for all. The whole premise that the neighbors "never saw it coming" is absurd. Why would they have seen it coming? The vast majority of drug users, and drug dealers for that matter, are not shiftless, bleary eyed addicts or hardened criminals. They're regular people that hold jobs, pay their bills, do well in school and yes, even help their neighbors. Society has to come to grips with the fact that the vast majority of drug use, especially the use of non-narcotic, non-addictive drugs like psilocybin mushrooms and marijuana, is not destructive or harmful to the user. These kids should never have been arrested nor should they be sent to jail.

Chuck Kucher

Graduate Student

The recent arrest of three UNH students has caused a lot of stir around town. News of the marijuana bust has caused people to question the actions of the police, the school, their peers, and even themselves. Everyone is pointing fingers; it's almost as if something just happened that might actually change peoples' lives.

News flash: nothing is going to change. Pot isn't going to be legalized anytime soon, and the War on Drugs is still going to fail at what it's actually supposed to do. Think about it: we are spending billions of dollars to fight wars in countries that have absurd drug problems. We have 'x' amount of drug related deaths each year in the United States. These are the facts politicians see, and, as silly as it is, marijuana is still considered a drug. I mean, come on, it makes you dangerously hungry.

People are not just going to stop wanting to smoke marijuana. And as long as there is a demand for it, somebody is going to supply it. That's the unstoppable power of market-based economics. So, until authorities can successfully manipulate the minds of society's rational, freethinking individuals, marijuana isn't going anywhere.

Weed is here to stay, and the future of three great kids has been thrown into question.

Avram Niebling

Senior

Outdoor orientation could help curb underage drinking

While UNH has been reacting to this issue, there are already a number of schools that have taken a proactive approach to controlling underage drinking on campus. Schools that range in size from Middlebury College to West Virginia University offer outdoor orientation experiences to incoming freshman that acclimate students to campus life while showing them what the alternatives are to drinking in the dorms.

Activities like hiking, rock climbing, and paddling are all used to build confidence in students and are usually facilitated by upper class men or Grad. students. If you want to teach responsible partying to incoming freshman, it has to come from older students and not from administration officials and the police. You have to create an atmosphere where students feel comfortable talking about how it really is. This is the goal of several successful outdoor orientation programs.

UNH has professors in the Kinesiology department that are among the leading researchers in the nation when it comes to outdoor orientation. Astonishingly, the UNH outdoor orientation program "Fireside" has been closed for over 5 years, and there are no plans to reinstate it or start another program. While these professors continue to earn their paycheck doing research on the benefits these programs bring to other schools, university officials are debating how harshly to punish underage offenders thinking that this will solve the problem.

You know, that new expensive rock wall that stands unused in New Hampshire Hall could probably be used during one of these orientation programs. That is if the wall was actually open to students, and if we actually had a program.

Mark Diedering

Junior