“But everybody knows that smokin' ain't allowed in school.” – Brownsville Station

Going to college, for most budding young minds, is all about finding your place in the world and getting the education necessary to become a viable part of civil society, one that vastly surpasses the scholastic ranks of your idiot predecessors.

Accomplishing this goal, however, takes conviction, a tremendous amount of focus and, depending on the student’s extracurricular interests and disposition towards inebriating substances, enough mind-ripping marijuana to choke an inbred Russian racehorse with a vicious case of mange.

Seriously, they don’t call them institutions of higher learning for nothing. College is where most people go to have their first experiences with weed – all of it -- the good, bad and the unexplainable. These are the life-changing moments that can help shape their bright-eyed perspectives of this wild, wild world and hopefully assist in spitting out semi-intelligent, well-rounded individuals.

But that all depends on how these novices-of-the-numb take to the effects of marijuana. Sometimes these first time high encounters can mean the difference between unleashing another ultra-conservative Trump-humper inside this whirling universe or furnishing humanity with a liberal, free minded, willing-to-try-anything-once-type of person that helps usher in a whole new class of compassion and acceptance.

Cannabis can provide its users with many levels of enlightenment – Oh yes, it certainly can. It can also get students reeeeaaalllly freaking stoned, cause them to freak out, flip over the furniture in the dorm, call 911 and ruin the party for everyone else.

But hey, that’s just kids! Still, Canada, which is set to launch its recreational marijuana market in October, was given the unique opportunity recently to make the planet a better place. All it had to do was give college students permission to smoke weed freely around its campuses and the cosmic gods would have rewarded the generations to come with a kinder, happier, more sexually evolved population than ever before.

But that’s not going to happen. It turns out that smoking weed isn’t going to be anymore accepted by academia in the coming months than the days when it was held down by prohibition. Well, maybe a little.

The new pot law, which gives adults 19 and older the freedom to purchase marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol, should have magically transformed colleges all over Canada, but no, some universities are refusing to give weed the proper respect. Several educational facilities are planning to impose strict bans on smoking marijuana and the consumption of edibles. Others plan to limit their cannabis restrictions to smokeable forms. Let's just hope you are enrolled at any one of those.

University of Guelph vice-president Don O’Leary told CTV News that smoking cannabis would be prohibited. Yet, he admits that cannabis edibles will be tolerated to some degree. Students at Guelph can drink booze in their residences, just as long as they do not invade any public spots, including work areas, with their drunken shenanigans. These kinds of restrictions will, for the most part, apply to marijuana edibles.

Colleges in other parts of Canada will follow a similar policy. Queen’s University in Kingston is also banning students (and staff) from smoking marijuana on campus, but administrators say they will probably allow the consumption of edible pot products in some areas. These are the parts of the country where cannabis beverages are destined to be a mega-hit.

Still, not every university is budging on bud.

McGill University in Quebec plans to ban all forms of marijuana consumption on campus. “Edibles, drinkables, topicals etc.,” will not be permitted, according to school officials, and anyone caught in possession of these products will be subject to disciplinary action. Wow! Our deepest sympathies go out to those students enrolled here for the semester. Might we recommend a book on 255 ways to get high without marijuana? Sounds like you're going to need it!

However, in Alberta, British Columbia and Nova Scotia, where the laws are less restrictive with respect to smoking, universities might be a little more open minded to the reefer chiefing madness of their student bodies. Some schools are considering limiting the consumption of smokeable forms to designated areas, the same as tobacco. Other facilities may allow students to smoke but they will not likely give them permission to use edibles.

Some universities have no intention of making policy changes, at all, once Canada starts selling marijuana later this year. Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador says not only will it ban the consumption of marijuana, in all forms, it will also continue handling pot-related offenses through law enforcement.

Of course, as long as students keep possession limits in check (30 grams or less) and do not sell to minors (we know college gets expensive, but please do not deal weed to the high school kids), Canadian police will have no legal means to appease those Deans who get down on the doobie.