Many students are frequently using nitrous oxide, cannabis, ketamine and cocaine. It’s impacting their mental health and their educational outcomes. But what is the sector doing about it?
When we’re talking about drugs, “decriminalisation” is probably the most hotly debated, politicised, fear-invoking word in the world of public policy making.
The premise that the harsher the penalty, the greater the deterrent to prevent drug use, is proven to be more about ideology than reality – as is the premise that we can rid the world (or indeed the campus) of drugs, despite drugs being used by every community, in one way or another, since the dawn of time.
A quick internet search confirms that universities – places of education – often adopt a “zero-tolerance” approach to drugs. Yet young people are our generation of risk takers. More fatal road accidents occur within this age group than any other. Accidents from tombstoning through to horse riding often involve our young people learning their limits.
Where else are our young, impressionable young people, many in their first experience away from home, going to experiment with drugs? Where better to be informed of the impact that drug taking will have on their lives?
If there is no positive outcome from ejecting a young person from the path to their career, and no benefit to punishing them for experimenting, why do we do it? Why do we demand that some students know their periodic table yet let them graduate without understanding the chemical impact that mixing two types of drugs can cause?
So as Universities UK launches work on drugs, can we find a different approach in our universities – a focus on harm reduction and education? After all, the deterrent effect of prohibition has already failed for those found in possession of drugs.
A lack of education
As a former Detective Chief Inspector, I recall following closely the drug related death of a young woman. The bereaved family’s MP requested that the police review the circumstances of her death, which involved the young woman overdosing on heroin and fentanyl. This woman, with her whole life ahead of her, had never received any form of drug education, awareness of her use or harm reduction.
This is nothing new. The UK had seen another record year of drug related death, a consecutive record that keeps on increasing.
The UK has a third of all drug-related deaths in Europe, yet you don’t really hear about this statistic. Remember the 12 drug related deaths recorded in Barrow in Furness in 2018? No, of course not – it was not front-page news.
Stigma kills, is as harmful as the drugs themselves, and prevents people from seeking help. According to the drug checking charity “We Are the Loop”, 8 out of 10 people have never received any form of drugs education or awareness yet 1 in 3 people within the night-time economy and festival scenes, use controlled drugs. And the Crime Survey of England and Wales 2021 shows that 20 percent of 16-to 24-year-olds used a controlled drug in the past year – a whopping 1.3 million young people.
It is true that 90 percent of all drug use is non-problematic, but addiction occurs in every corner of society. How can you recover from a condition you do not know you have? Recalling my conversation with the MP, I found her to be personally compassionate and trauma informed. But publicly she was caught between the complex area of acquiescence and prohibition.
Diversionary tactics
To her credit, despite this challenge, she enabled the growth of the evidence base towards drug diversion. This led to the development of Thames Valley Police’s Howard League Award winning scheme which turns a previously incriminating encounter into a positive health outcome by diverting people away from the criminal justice system and into a scheme led by our experts in the drug services. It’s a scheme that generated startling results and new innovative pathways, including drug diversion in schools to preclude exclusions. There is so much more to do.
The scheme has been presented to Home Nation Governments and Ministers and has now become a model within the government’s latest Drug Strategy, and positively cited within the Cabinet Office’s Commission for Race and Ethnic Disparities to reduce disproportionality in the justice system.
Drug diversion can enable places of education to adopt a robust, trauma informed policy to deal with drug use and possession in a lawful yet public health centred way. Many Police Forces within the UK now utilise drug diversion and is a policy which has required no changes in the law, is politically neutral and maintains public trust, confidence, and legitimacy.
These days, I meet with groups of students every week to educate them on harm reduction, introducing them to the cycle of change. I can say from experience that policies that emphasise harm reduction instead of “punishment”, and that give students a safe space to ask the questions that “zero tolerance” policies and stigma prevent, work. That’s what education should be about, surely?
