It’s time to accept weed

Editor's note: This article mentions substance use and overdose.

The first funeral I ever attended was about a month before I started at Duke. It was the middle of the night when I found out my friend had died. I was driving home, and the illuminated fast food and gas station signs flashed against my car windows. My phone started to ring, and I saw my friend Dell’s name appear on my CarPlay screen. I answered the call and from the way Dell said my name when he answered the phone I knew something was wrong. An entire list of all the people who could have been hurt appeared in my head. 

“Bro, Elijah died,” Dell said. It felt like time slowed down, and I froze. I texted Elijah’s cousin who told me that they had found him dead in his house. It wasn’t until three days later that I found out he died of an overdose because someone laced his weed with what we believe was fentanyl. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 100 times stronger than morphine and can be extremely lethal if not dosed properly. Due to its highly addictive nature, drug dealers will lace weed with the narcotic to entice consumers. However, drug dealers are not trained to microdose fentanyl, which is why people can have severe reactions when consuming laced weed. This is not uncommon: just this year in May on a Monday night in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, three people overdosed on weed laced with fentanyl.  

I remember talking to my dad after my friend's death and his saying “It really is a sad situation, he didn’t do anything wrong, and the parents didn’t do anything wrong”. The truth of this sentiment stuck with me. In a small funeral home, on the east side of Cleveland, I watched a pastor and funeral home assistant shut the casket of my eighteen-year-old friend; he did nothing wrong, and, more so, he did nothing out of the ordinary. Three out of every ten high school seniors smoke weed and it is now acknowledged that weed is substantially better for you than other addictive substances like alcohol. 

This is why the narrative must be changed around the legalization of weed. Elijah bought weed from a drug dealer only a couple of weeks before weed became legalized in Ohio. Legalization brings safeguards for consumption and an elimination of the risk of weed being laced with illegal substances. However, a bill currently stands in the North Carolina House of Representatives that would effectively ban weed from being legalized in the future — even if it is legalized on the federal level. The banning of weed will not stop North Carolinians from consuming marijuana but will ensure that they consume it with no safeguards or regulation. The bill should be rejected again in the next house session, as it was at the start of the year, and should be vetoed if ever passed to ensure that no life is ended too early from laced weed. 

There is one more thing that could have saved my friend's life, and it hangs in every dorm room on Duke’s campus locked in a small box. Narcan is an antidote administered to those experiencing an overdose that will block symptoms of opioids for up to 90 minutes. Duke University puts Narcan in every dorm as a safety precaution; however, the boxes containing Narcan are ziplocked. When overdosing on fentanyl, people have minutes before their lungs shut down, and they are unable to breathe. The time it would take to cut the zip lock and open the box of Narcan could be detrimental to a Duke student who may be experiencing an overdose. It is time that Duke University cut ties with the zip locks and help ensure that no students at Duke University have to see their classmates in a coffin. 

Ethan Khorana is a Trinity first-year. His pieces typically run on alternate Fridays.