Mason Tvert addresses a 2006 Colorado rally. Oaksterdam News photo courtesy of SAFER.

This spring Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation (SAFER) is working with college students to pass campus ballot initiatives and generate news stories that convey the message that cannabis is safer than alcohol and should be treated as such.

The group will work with campus NORML chapters and SSDP chapters, as well as other students and student organizations around the country. If all goes as planned, there will be 15 or more college campuses voting on whether their universities should continue punishing students more for using cannabis than for using alcohol.

SAFER passed such student referenda at the University of Colorado-Boulder and Colorado State University in 2005, and it worked with campus NORML and SSDP chapters in 2006 to pass them at Florida State University, the University of Texas-Austin and the University of Maryland. Students will continue to work with SAFER to pressure the administrations at these schools to adopt policy changes that reflect the student votes.

The previous campus victories led to extensive media coverage at the local and national levels. Stories about the CU and CSU victories appeared in the Washington Times and repeatedly in the Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News and other local outlets; the UT-Austin victory made the Dallas Morning News; the Washington Post reported on the UMD win; and the collective SAFER effort was documented in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The shift in focus from local and statewide ballot initiatives to campus referenda is a return to SAFER’s roots. The organization’s first project upon its formation in January 2005 involved the campaigns at CU-Boulder and CSU. Students at those schools voted 68-32 and 56-44,respectively, and the effort garnered a great deal of local and statewide media coverage,as well as some national media coverage.

Following its initial success on campus, SAFER placed a citywide initiative on the ballot in Denver, which votersapproved 54-46 in November 2005. Initiative 100 (I-100) effectively amended city ordinances to make the possession of up to one ounce of cannabis legal for adults 21 and older. Nevertheless, police continued to cite people and the city continued prosecuting them under state law.

This set the scene for SAFER to go statewide in Colorado.

The Alcohol-Marijuana Equalization Initiative Campaign – a project of the SAFER Voter Education Fund – oversaw the collection of 130,000 signatures to qualify an initiative for the November 2006 ballot. If passed, Amendment 44 would have amended state statutes to make cannabis legal under the same circumstances as the Denver initiative.

The measure ultimately failed, although it received an impressive 41 percent of the vote. Despite the loss at the polls, the measure was an overall victory. In fact, more Coloradans voted for cannabis than did for the sitting Republican congressman running for governor. But more importantly, the campaign made local and statewide headlines on a regular basis for virtually an entire year.

It also generated some national and even international coverage, including a segment on Saturday Night Live in whichone of the “Weekend Update” anchors pretended to have left the show to go to Colorado for “one ounce of hassle-free weed.”

There has been discussion of another statewide initiative in Colorado in 2008 or 2010, but for now SAFER will focus on working with college students and other local cannabis reform activists to generate media coverage and spread the message that cannabis is safer than alcohol.

If you are a college student interested in working with SAFER on your campus, or if you or your organization wishes to work with SAFER, please contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or 303-861-0033.  Otherwise, please see SAFERchoice.org for more information.