This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs. Just say no. Drug Abuse Resistance Education. By now we've all seen the slogans, heard the anti-drug speeches and watched the educational videos in health class. Penn students are probably part of the generation more educated about drugs and their dangers than any other. Yet despite all the mantras we were fed in middle school, drug use remains a very real issue -- both at Penn and nationally. In fact a recent Daily Pennsylvanian survey showed that over 30 percent of students have used drugs in the past year. And most students say that drugs are readily available on campus. So while the war on drugs rages on beyond the campus, Penn must decide how to address the problem from within.
Who's doing it
A recent DP survey, conducted from October 2 to October 4, found that out of 404 undergraduates questioned about drug use, 32.7 percent had used drugs in the last year. Of the students surveyed, 28.2 percent said they had smoked marijuana, and 7.7 percent said they had used ecstasy over this time period. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percent. Still, while about one-third of the campus has at least experimented with drugs recently, these figures don't stand out when compared to national statistics. A 1999 national study conducted by the Core Institute of Southern Illinois University surveyed 157 two- and four-year colleges and found that 32.5 percent of college students had used marijuana the previous year -- a similar figure to the DP survey. Similarly, ecstasy use does not seem to be more prevalent at Penn than elsewhere. The same Core survey found that nationally 5.5 percent of students had used "designer drugs," a category that included ecstasy. So given the medical and social effects substance use and abuse can have, Penn is trying to figure out the best way to address the issue. Evelyn Wiener, director of Student Health Services, said the real difficulty is how to assess the situation. "To what extent is an individual's usage affecting their behavior, affecting their academic performance, affecting their social relationships?" she asked. These questions are being looked at by the Office of Health Education, which did a survey last spring. The study focused primarily on alcohol consumption, but it did include several questions on marijuana and ecstasy use. And on November 9, Student Health will be administering a campus-wide survey looking exclusively at drug use patterns among undergraduates, particularly as they relate to the consequences.
Party on
The real issue is what role drug use plays in the campus social scene. Student opinions differ on where the drug use happens -- but most agree that it's not hard to get drugs if you want. "For a lot of people it's easier to get drugs than alcohol," College sophomore Matt Koppenheffer said. "A lot of people don't even consider pot a drug anymore, it's kind of like alcohol." And according to the survey, a majority thought a sizable portion of the student body does drugs. About 61 percent correctly believed that between 20 and 50 percent of Penn students sometimes use drugs. College junior Lindsay Villani said,"Living in the high rises, [drug use] just seems to be prevalent and it's one of those things you hear everybody talking about." And many said that all social groups at Penn are trying out recreational drugs, with some suggesting that freshman usage is increasing. "I can definitely see freshmen doing it more just because they have less access to other entertainment options, for lack of a better word," Wharton senior Paul Sethi said. But Ken Meehan, a social worker with Counseling And Psychological Services, disagreed with the notion that drug use was worse among underclassmen. "I see probably just as many freshmen as I do seniors. I don't really think that I see any patterns in the classes, and I don't see any more prevalence of drug use among upperclassmen as among underclassmen," Meehan said.
The dirty truth
Of course, while students said they had tried these drugs, "tried" seems to be the operative word. Of the people who used marijuana, 47 percent said they used it only once every couple of months. And of the students who had used ecstasy, almost all said they'd tried it only once or twice in the last year. Still, many students are not aware of the effects such drugs can have on the body, even after limited exposure. According to Kyle Kampman, a researcher specializing in drug addiction at Penn's Treatment Research Center, occasional marijuana use alone may not be that bad. "By and large, marijuana is not dramatically dangerous to your brain. Now, what it does to the lungs is probably carcinogenic," said Kampman, who is also a Psychiatry professor. But he added that "a lot of people ascribe to the Gateway Theory: You don't go from not doing any drugs to doing crack, cocaine and heroin. You tend to escalate: cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana..." Ecstasy, which is gaining huge popularity nationally among high school and college age kids, is definitely more dangerous. So far the evidence is based primarily on animal experimentation. "Ecstasy has been shown in mice and rats to kill brain cells," Kampman said. He added that the Drug Enforcement Agency lists ecstacy with "heroin as being the most addictive, most dangerous drug with no medical use." But these dangers seem to be unknown. College junior Meredith Wepner, a member of the Drug and Alcohol Resource Team, stressed the importance of educating student about the medical consequences of drug use, particularly ecstasy, which she said becomes more prevalent during occasions such as Spring Fling. "I think that's the problem with everybody -- we don't really know. Ignorance is causing more people to use it than I think would... if they knew the real effects," Wepner said.
Penn's drug war
Currently, the University is working to inform students about the dangers of drugs. This has not been a huge focus of the administration in the past, however, because alcohol education was considered more important. But many think that greater drug awareness is needed on campus. "It doesn't seem to be an administration focus at all," Wharton senior Preetam Rao said. DART adviser Kate Ward-Gaus, who meets with students who have violated certain drug and alcohol policies on campus, said that this will change now, as the focus on alcohol consumption starts to shift. "We're making strides in dealing with the alcohol issue and now the time and resources are such that we can move on to other substances," Ward-Gaus said. She added that "the requisite course of action is education first, with the assumption that this will reduce behavior." The Office of Health Education, in conjunction with DART, is currently planning a program to raise awareness about the dangers of ecstasy. "One of the things that's come to [DART's] attention is that they see ecstasy crossing cultural lines. There are people who are low-risk alcohol users who would consider experimenting with ecstasy," Ward-Gaus said.
