As the general election took over every news agenda in early July, many might have missed university advocacy organisation Universities UK’s (UUK) comprehensive report, in which they urged their 142 member universities to put student health at the heart of their approach to drugs by tackling supply, reducing demand and improving support.
Student drug use is an inevitability that doesn’t end at Freshers Week: Over three-quarters of university students admitted to taking drugs in the Tab’s recent annual drug survey, with 18% saying they were addicted, cannabis coming out on top. While most students don’t develop addictions, 30% said they had never taken illicit drugs before going to university.
While we don’t have enough data on university-specific impacts of drug use, such as drop-out rates, academic achievement or progression to further study and employment, just below half of UUK’s 12% of respondents reported wanting to reduce their use – most commonly to eliminate the impact drug use can have on their studies and mental and physical health – but faced barriers in seeking help from their university to do so because of stigma and fearing a punitive response from their university’s drug policy.
If many people’s first introduction to drugs happens at university, higher education campuses provide fertile ground to support and educate young people on the risks of drug use. Instead of taking a just say no approach, universities should put the safety and well-being of students first, UUK says.
Facing the facts about student health and drug use
Steve Rolles is the senior policy analyst at Transform Drug Policy Foundation. He shared his thoughts on UUK’s report with leafie, highlighting the benefits and shortcomings of their recommendations.
“They’re very clear that a harm reduction approach has to be at the centre of universities’ response. So they’re critical of zero tolerance approaches, which I think is very important,” Rolles says.
“We just have to accept that student drug use is a reality to some extent. I think they are pragmatic about that and say that rather than punish students who use drugs, they should support them to make responsible health-based decisions. I think that to that extent it’s very positive.”
Students are not very forthcoming about their illegal activities, because they’re worried about the possible consequences of taking illegal drugs within an institution.
Some news organisations were keen to point out that the report indicates students are less likely to take drugs than other young people: while only 12% of the 4,000 surveyed by UUK reported taking a drug in the last year, figures by the Office for National Statistics showed that 17.6% of 16–24-year-olds in England and Wales reported drug use in the year to March 2023.
“I thought their statistic that 12% of students were using drugs in the past year was dubious,” Rolles argues.
“I think students are not very forthcoming about their illegal activities, because they’re worried about the possible consequences of taking illegal drugs within an institution. This is a very well documented methodological phenomenon in surveys, so my guess is that the figure is probably half of what the actual number is, or it’s a substantial underestimate. I think they should have been clearer in acknowledging that. It’s a small quibble, but I think they make quite a lot of that statistic in the report.”
One of the report’s three key areas is the focus on reducing demand. The most commonly used drugs included cannabis (53%), followed by cocaine (8%), prescription drugs (7%), ketamine (6%) and ecstasy (4%). While many use illicit drugs for fun, to bond with friends, or to help with motivation, nearly one in four said they use drugs to self-medicate “emotional distress or uncomfortable feelings”.
“I don’t think demand reduction as such is a particularly useful goal. I think what you should do is seek to reduce harmful use, not use per se. Harmful use includes people self-medicating for mental health problems, using high doses of drugs at high frequency or other high risk behaviours like mixing or injecting, or daily use of stimulants.”
“It’s again why I’m a bit concerned about this 12% figure. One, I think it’s too low, but also I think it distorts the fact that drug use per se is not really the concern. The concern is high risk use.”
Despite the report’s focus on health and harm reduction, UUK also decided to separate legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco from illegal drugs in the study.
“They basically ignore alcohol and tobacco throughout, even though they are associated with far greater health harms than all illegal drugs put together,” says Rolles.
The impact of criminalisation and tackling supply chains
Despite evidence that a zero-tolerance approach is unsuccessful in reducing drug use and instead deters students from seeking support, many universities’ approach includes imposing fines and suspending or expelling students if they are caught using or possessing drugs.
However, the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 does not require universities to adopt a zero-tolerance approach or place a duty on them to report possession. Even before UUK’s report this year, UWE Bristol had already issued a harm reduction statement, as well as University of Bristol, following their participation of a two-year pilot which saw Bristol become the first UK city to adopt a harm reduction approach.
I think one of the things that they really should have called for was decriminalisation. Obviously it’s not within the gift of universities to decriminalise possession of drugs… but I think they should certainly have advocated for it.
To build trust and ensure student wellbeing remains at the centre of universities’ approach, the report emphasises the importance of embedding student engagement into the design, implementation and evaluation of tackling drug-related issues while working with staff, communications, the NHS and the police to reduce potential harms. They also recognise that taking action to address issues does not always require involving the police, acknowledging that their involvement risks disproportionately targeting certain groups of students, including on the basis of ethnicity.
While many harm reduction advocacy groups likely welcome the general narrative of the report, Rolles remains critical about the lack of focus on decriminalisation and the emphasis on tackling supply chains.
“I think one of the things that they really should have called for was decriminalisation. Obviously it’s not within the gift of universities to decriminalise possession of drugs. That responsibility sits with Westminster, but I think they should certainly have advocated for it.”
Decriminalisation is not a controversial position amongst drug policy advocates and health organisations, Rolles points out: The World Health Organisation (WHO), the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Royal Society of Public Health and many other authoritative voices in the health field advise against criminalising risk behaviours to avoid pushing away populations that need support.
“It’s the same reason why we say that you shouldn’t criminalise transmission of HIV and you shouldn’t criminalise sex work. There’s a lot of parallel arguments here, but we’re talking about risk behaviours, which are fundamentally in the public health domain, not the domain of criminal justice.”
“The most disheartening oversight was that they didn’t even mention decriminalisation or the fact that drugs have been decriminalised in countries around the world effectively and that WHO and the United Nations system have signed a common position statement advocating decriminalisation as a critical enabler of a meaningful public health response, including harm reduction. Decriminalisation and harm reduction very much go hand in hand. The illegal drug market is a result of prohibition and a problem that regulated drug supply would deal with, but the report doesn’t go anywhere near the legalisation debate either.”
Promoting safer drug use
“A lot of the risks that young people face with drugs are increased by the fact that they’re produced and supplied illegally. So you don’t have information on potency and you don’t have information on safer use and information that you would get with other things, like paracetamol that you buy in Poundland,” explains Rolles.
Besides integrating drug education in student wellbeing services and delivering information about drug use and supply chains as early as during induction weeks, the report also encourages universities to work with third sector organisations such as The Loop to promote safe use through drug checking, and the Staying Safe Programme, an online course designed to educate university students about alcohol and other drug use.
“This is where the narrative has a slight gap in it. They endorse drug checking so that people can know what they’re taking and get access to safer use information, but they don’t acknowledge the fact that you only need drug checking because drugs are illegal. Nobody takes their cocktails or cigarettes to a drug checking service, because you know what’s in them.”
Next steps
It remains to be seen whether this will reinvigorate a wider conversation about harm reduction, not to mention the bureaucratic hurdles of trying to enact change at universities. However, Rolles says the report is still a positive step forward if it results in zero tolerance universities moving away from their current approach.
Next, the Universities UK Drug Taskforce will establish a small number of pilot study groups to test and evaluate the recommended approaches, whose findings will further inform and support universities’ responses.
Following the release, Professor Nic Beech, Vice Chancellor of the University of Salford and Chair of the Taskforce said:
“As educators, our priority is to see students succeed and we know that drug use can work against this, impacting students’ health, wellbeing, education, and future careers.”
“Universities need to take a proactive role in showing students the risks of using drugs, but also in providing support to both users and non-users.”
Commenting on the news in Wonkhe, one of the leading sites for higher education debate, Consultant Psychiatrist and Addiction Medicine Specialist at University College London Adam R Winstock, who works with the Staying Safe programme mentioned in the report, said:
“Higher education providers have a responsibility to engage, educate and empower students to navigate these years with the knowledge and skills to reduce the risks related to substance use.”
“As an addiction psychiatrist I know all too well the harm drugs can cause people and their communities. Addiction very rarely sits in isolation of other psychiatric conditions, adverse childhood events and life traumas.”
