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Volume 128 Issue 95
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
kansan.com
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The student voice since 1904
University geography professor Barney Warf has conducted research on legal recreational marijuana and has predicted the next five state to legalize the drug. He said he believes California, Nevada, Illinois, Vermont and New York will be next.
University professor predicts next five states to legalize marijuana
LANE COFAS
@alleyahC
Barney Warf, a professor of geography at the University, said he believes California, Nevada, Illinois, Vermont and New York will be the next five states to legalize recreational marijuana based off the states' political trends and research he has conducted. Medical marijuana is legal in all five states.
Warfdescribedrecreational pot as a largely western movement and said there is potential for this to move east, such as legalization in Washington, D.C.
"I picked states that tend to vote Democrat," Warf said. "I think California is pretty much a sure bet for 2016."
Warf's research, a scholarly article titled "High Points: A Historical Geography of Cannabis," published in the October 2014 issue of Geographical Review, highlights the geography of cannabis use, the many groups and communities trying to regulate the drug and society's overall negative opinion of the drug.
It is much less likely that Kansas will legalize pot than other states, partially because of political views, he said.
Warf's predictions are somewhat on track with current legalization efforts and trends — a March article in TIME said Nevada, California, Arizona, Maine and Massachusetts may be the next five.
"If [marijuana legalization] comes to Kansas, it would likely come first in medical marjuana," Warf said.
Warf said he believes pot is not as dangerous as other drugs, such as cocaine and heroin, and that it is extremely bizarre that pot is being treated like it is as harmful as other illicit drugs.
Dan Smith, a senior from Mission Viejo, Calif., said legalizing recreational pot would not only be beneficial for states' revenue, it would
"The numbers of people driving around stoned just didn't pan out [as expected]," he said.
be safer for consumers.
be safer for consumers.
"I think having it be legalized and regulated would be a great deal safer for anyone who smokes since there would be a decreased chance of it being laced with anything else," Smith said. "Not to mention it would free up a lot of space in prisons, which has been a huge problem in my home state."
hartz
BEN LIPOWITZ/KANSAN
Legalizing pot would also bring in a new source of tax funds, Smith said.
Barney Warf, a University geography professor, said he believes Kansas is much less likely to legalize recreational pot use, partially because of its political views. He said it would be more likely to come in medical legislation.
Edited by Emma LeGault
Group pushes for conference on LGBTQ at KU
Warf said he believes part of the reason more states are looking into legalizing pot is because of what they've seen in Colorado and Washington after those states legalized the drug. Warf said contrary to criticism, arrests related to the misuse of the drug have
not dramatically increased in those states.
ALLISON CRIST
@AllistonCristUDK
Sophomore Harrison Baker from Topeka has been working with a group of six other students to bring the Midwest Bisexual Lesbian Gay Transgender Ally College Conference (MBLGTACC) to the University. The large midwestern conference has never been held in Kansas before, and Baker is determined to change that.
BAKER: It's a conference that's hosted once a year at different colleges in the midwest for LGBTQ individuals. It usually hosts over 2,300 people. This year it's going to be at Illinois State University and Purdue University the next. We're
KANSAN: What exactly is MBLGTACC?
trying to bring it here in 2017 due to the bidding process being two years out.
BAKER: We are required to draft a sample budget and get letters of support from different University groups as well as from the town itself. Right now, we're waiting for the conference's oversight committee to announce the bid deadline, but we've already built a budget and started getting letters of support.
KANSAN: What is the bidding process like?
BAKER: As of right now, we've contacted over 45 different organizations, both on and off campus. We haven't seen any resistance,
KANSAN: Who has your group talked to and got approval from?
FRANK WEIRICH/KANSAN
Harrison Baker, a sophomore from Topeka, is working with a group of other students to bring the Midwest Bisexual Lesbian Gay Transgender Ally College Conference to the University. It has never been held in Kansas before.
and most people have been extremely helpful. We still have to talk to people like the
OPINION 4
A&F 5
SEE LGBTQ PAGE 2
What 'rape' means author discusses history's definitions
"I want to show you that challenging the definition of rape actually has a long history in the United States, and it's one that I believe has left significant legacies for the way we understand the subject today," Freedman said.
RILEY MORTENSEN
@RileyMortensen
We're living in a time in a particularly intensive moment of scrutiny of the legal and cultural meaning of sexual violence, Estelle Freedman said.
Nearly 80 people gathered in the Hall Center for the Humanities Monday night to hear Freedman's lecture on her newest book, "Redefining Rape: Sexual Violence in the Era of Suffrage and Segregation." Freedman is a U.S. historian specializing in women's history and feminist studies and a professor at Stanford University.
Index
Freedman's lecture and book focus on events in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a time Freedman said when both women's rights and racial justice advocates contested the narrow understanding of rape. At the time, she said rape was understood as a brutal attack on a white woman, chased by a stranger, typically an African-American man.
CLASSIFIEDS 7
BREW 7
As Freedman was writing her book, she was struck by what seemed to her as an escalation in media attention to definitions of rape, she said. From the phrase "legitimate rape" used by former Missouri Republican Congressman Todd Akin in 2012 to the exposure of the practice of corrective rape against lesbians in South Africa, the stories in the media took a number of forms, Freedman said.
SEE FREEDMAN PAGE 2
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