Aragon opens up about marijuana

In seventh grade, Cody, a current Aragon student, found himself in a state of depression because of his mother’s recent diagnosis with cancer. In order to alleviate this pain, Cody and his brother found a solution that would eventually morph into more than just an antidepressant.

“My brother was in high school at the time, and he just brought home a joint. And that was my first time,” Cody says.

“I would be depressed for the majority of the day, but when I smoked, it would be equivalent to when I was hanging out with friends,” he continues. “You know, whatever makes you happy—this was one of those things.”

However, at the time, his usage was limited to about once a month.

But as the years progressed, so did the frequency of Cody’s usage. “It became easier to obtain, and it became a lot easier to get away with. And also, I began to realize that it’s relatively harmless healthwise.”

For a short time in high school, Cody even sold marijuana in order to fund his personal usage. “I think it was freshman year that my parents didn’t want me to get a job, but I wanted money first of all to get pot,” he says. “What ended up happening was I would buy a large amount and sell off as much as I needed to break even, and then I would have some left over. And that’s what I would use.”

However, Cody has since stopped using and dealing the drug.

“Recently I quit smoking just because my girlfriend isn’t too pro-it,” he says. “I think that just her circle of friends are very close-minded about it.”

With regards to dealing marijuana, Cody found that the risk simply outweighed the reward. “I would have to bring it to school. I would have to be paranoid about if a teacher smells it in my backpack or not,” he says. “And then if I got caught, I could get expelled.”

Cody says that accessing marijuana at Aragon is easy. “It’s just ridiculously easy to get,” he says. “People who are willing to sell you a little bit if you need it? Over 20. But religiously like selling it and like, selling more than using? Fewer, but there are still [some].”

Cody believes that the argument that marijuana deteriorates one’s health is overblown. “Teachers hype it up, you know, ‘It’s a gateway drug. It’s bad for you.’ But realistically, the damage is very minimal, and it’s not really physical, because it doesn’t affect your lungs.”

Dean’s thoughts on marijuana use on campus

Dean Michael Valmonte says the frequency of marijuana incidents at Aragon has decreased substantially over the years. “When I started 15 years ago, the incident rates were probably 10 to 15 per year, and let’s say five years later it started to go down,” Valmonte says.

According to Valmonte, marijuana cases are becoming rarer and rarer. In addition, fewer of these incidents actually involve the selling of the drug at Aragon.

“Nowadays, we very rarely see marijuana on campus. I’m sure it’s around, but when we get marijuana here now, it’s because someone just smoked it, and you can smell it on them, and teachers smelled it and have asked me to come to the class and talk to the kid, but that’s it,” he says. “In the last year, maybe two incidents of marijuana.”

“But in most cases involving marijuana, it’s usually after consumption, when the aroma is detected by a teacher and subsequently reported to me,” Valmonte says.

Valmonte credits heightened surveillance and stronger enforcement with an overall drop in marijuana-related incidents. “So over time, we got better in our surveillance, and, of course, word got around that our surveillance was pretty good,” he says. “So it started to slow down a little bit, but it took time.”

Also, Valmonte points to a changing student body as a reason for this decrease. “The type of student that we’re getting has changed. I just think the school has become more academic. I mean, we’ve always been an academic school, but we’re not getting the type of kids who smoke pot.”

The disciplinary actions taken by Valmonte and the administration vary with the nature of the incident. Possession results in a police call, and usually a one-day suspension or four-day drug counseling program with the district, while selling results in arrest and adjudication.

Student explains his complex relationship

“Euphoria” is the self-described feeling that Casey, a current student, experiences when under the influence of marijuana.

Casey explains, “So you’re happy; you’re paranoid; and you can only think [about] one thing at a time … Every now and then, anxiety and paranoia kicks in, like ‘oh my god!’”

Casey says he first tried marijuana in the summer before freshman year when his friends introduced him to the substance. “I was just curious … Friends [were] a huge influence. I had a few friends that were constantly using it,” says Casey.

Afterwards, marijuana became an important influence on his social life. “I was able to meet a whole bunch of cool people I wouldn’t have met if I didn’t smoke weed. Smoking weed, like alcohol, was a medium for me to connect with people,” says Casey.

Casey likens using marijuana to drinking alcohol. “People drink alcohol to interact with others at our age at least, and I think that marijuana for me has fallen into that category of being a social drug.”

Despite the social benefits, Casey recognizes some of marijuana’s adverse effects and says he uses, on average, a few times a month and only in small amounts.

“It’s more of just, like, cost-benefit—the cost being [that] you’re harming your body. It can’t be healthy for you. There has to be some health factor destroying some part of your body, brain, or lung or something,” says Casey.

He continues, “But the benefit would be having fun with your friends, and if the benefits outweigh the cost of it, then I would end up doing it.”

In addition, Casey claims that he never plans on smoking marijuana and only does so when his friends give him the opportunity.

Although he acknowledges the health risk as one of smoking marijuana’s negative effects, he insists that compromised academic ability is not one of those.

“My grades are good, personally [speaking],” says Casey. “Second semester junior year was probably the time I was heaviest smoking. I had a 4.5 GPA that semester.”

Nonetheless, he admits, “There has been a time—I really had to do some homework, and when a friend hit me up and [said], ‘Hey let’s go smoke a bowl.’ I’m like, ‘I’m down. I’m game. Let’s do it.’ Forget about homework. I just want to go smoke some weed and have a good time with my friends.”

In terms of the way others see him, Casey says, “I’m sure there are people out there who lose a little bit of respect for me ’cause I do it … I don’t care. I used to care, [but] I don’t care anymore. I’m happy where I am right now, and I’m not changing a bit.”

Drug-free friend of users gives his outsider perspective

Jesse, a current student, has never tried marijuana, but he is no stranger to its effects. He has witnessed firsthand his friends smoking marijuana.

His feelings on the matter are mixed, and he says, “I’m afraid that they could have the potential to do something irresponsible, but I trust them to not make irresponsible decisions while high.”

As for himself, he says he has no intention of trying. “I’m just not very interested in it. I’m kind of the same with just like alcohol and things like that. I don’t have an interest in the effects, and I know the health risks that they bring.”

Jesse recalls one instance when a friend’s use of marijuana damaged their relationship. “It’s just that [this person] would use it and then make very bad decisions and I would say, ‘You should probably stop,’ and then [this person] wouldn’t listen, and then it just led to a falling out.”

However, he insists that this case was the exception, not the rule. Jesse believes that aside from that individual, marijuana has not impacted his life or his relationships.

He furthers, “If you want to, it’s not like anything I say can stop you from doing it, because you want to do it. I just better just leave it be than [force] my own views on it.”

That reality hasn’t stopped him from trying. “Some would tell me about how they’ve had bad experiences with the after effects, but that’s in combination with other things too, and I just tell them to stop doing it [because] it’s not a very good way to live your life, and they just shake it off,” says Jesse.

However, one area that Jesse refuses to compromise on is marijuana in an academic setting. “I think that it’s good that they enforce [a marijuana-free environment] at school. It’s a learning place and you shouldn’t be smoking up here,” he says.

Despite Jesse’s conflicted stance on his friends using marijuana, he values his friends above all else.

“When they’re doing destructive things like that, it makes me feel disappointed in them,” says Jesse, “But they’re still my friends, so I care about them. It doesn’t like impede like ‘I’m not going to hang out with them anymore.’”