A year on from guidance on students and drugs, has anything changed?

Enabling student health and success came two and a half years after the launch of a Drugs and Alcohol Impact pilot – a scheme to help universities and SUs work towards better drug and alcohol practice – and 14 months after “launching” the guidance at a national conference on the issue.

It was eventually published two days before a General Election at a time in the year when it was almost certainly too late to influence practice ahead of welcome weeks in September 2024. It’s almost as if Universities UK was hoping nobody would notice.

Now SafeCourse, a new charity dedicated to reducing drug use and drug-related harms among university students (founded by Hilton Mervis after his son Daniel’s tragic drug-related death), has had a look at takeup across the sector of the six key recommendations in the guidance – adopting harm reduction approaches, providing drug education, offering drug testing services, ensuring confidential support, reforming disciplinary policies, and improving data collection.

Before we get into the findings, shout out to the university who said the FOI request was “vexatious”, and trebles all round to those universities in the private sector relying on that to refuse the FOI request.  I’m not sure that “we make a profit and so are going to hide our approach to student harm” is the look you’re after, but you do you.

The good news is that 67 per cent of universities (at least of those actually responding) have either adopted harm reduction policies or are developing them – a fundamental shift in thinking about student drug use, moving from criminalisation to care, as long as “developing” isn’t code for “oh, forgot all about that”, “we’re struggling to get it through a committee” or “better to say that than there’s no way on earth we’re touching that with a barge pole”.

Three-quarters of institutions say they now offer confidential support services for students who use drugs, recognising that help-seeking behaviour must be encouraged rather than punished. Students would need to know that, of course – plenty will think that seeking the help will trigger a zero-tolerance approach.

There are some potentially life-threatening gaps. Only 11 per cent of universities provide access to drug testing services, despite clear evidence that those services save lives by allowing students to check the content and purity of substances – nine out of ten institutions are missing a crucial intervention that could prevent overdoses and poisonings.

The situation with drug education is similar – less than half of universities provide structured programmes to help students make informed decisions.

The disciplinary landscape is interesting. A third of universities have revised their sanctions-based policies, but 14 per cent still maintain automatic punishments for drug possession. The punitive approach directly contradicts harm reduction principles and can have fatal consequences when students choose silence over seeking help.

Data collection is another weakness. Only 22 per cent of universities systematically track drug-related incidents, and another 35 per cent lack monitoring systems. Without proper data, institutions cannot identify trends, measure the effectiveness of interventions, or make evidence-based policy decisions. The information vacuum can perpetuate a cycle of reactive rather than proactive responses to student drug use.

Predictably, larger universities tend to have more comprehensive approaches, while smaller and specialist institutions cite resource constraints as barriers to progress. But some responses also revealed lingering cultural issues, with institutions still prioritising reputation management over student safety.

Accompanying the release is legal guidance from Victoria Wakefield KC, who was asked whether universities face greater legal risk from maintaining zero-tolerance drug policies or adopting harm reduction approaches – partly because the assumption has often been that strict enforcement policies help to shield universities from liability.

On negligence claims, the opinion references the case of Feder v Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (2023), which established that universities can owe students a duty of care when they’ve assumed responsibility for student welfare. Courts will examine whether institutions have made commitments to student safety through published policies and marketing materials – and those promoting pastoral care whilst simultaneously threatening disciplinary action for drug use create what the opinion terms “policy incoherence” – a contradiction that increases legal exposure.

Most university-student agreements include provisions for pastoral support and student wellbeing. Zero-tolerance policies can breach these contractual obligations by effectively preventing students from accessing promised support services. The fear of disciplinary consequences creates a barrier that could well constitute a failure to provide services with reasonable care and skill.

The opinion also looks at risks from coroners’ proceedings – the inquest into Daniel Mervis’s death specifically criticised the conflict between stated zero-tolerance policies and actual support practices, warning that contradictions “may discourage such students to seek help for their addiction out of fear of the consequences.” That creates both legal and reputational risks for institutions.

Probably most significantly, the opinion is clear that implementing Universities UK’s harm reduction guidance represents best practice within the sector – and courts would likely view adherence to the guidance when assessing whether institutions have met their duty of care. As a reminder, the UUK guidance explicitly says that zero-tolerance approaches:

…do not affect the prevalence of drug use, but instead deter students from coming forward for support.

The analysis also addresses a reality – even where a policy says otherwise, staff at zero-tolerance institutions often pursue harm reduction approaches informally, creating inconsistency between policy and practice. A disconnect like that amplifies legal risk, because universities may be judged on their actual practices rather than their written policies.

The opposite can be true, too. I’ve heard plenty of tales of SU officers thinking they’ve agreed a harm reduction approach, only to find those managing accommodation or other services operating Zero Tolerance in practice – with other university staff completely unaware of the change. It’s almost as if those universities were hoping nobody would notice.

As we pointed out on the site a year or so ago, if universities are not confident about their approaches to health because of reputational risk, you’d want your affiliation to the representative body to take some of the hit for you.

UUK recommends universities use every channel available – students’ unions, accommodation providers, and third-sector organisations – to communicate harm reduction information, principles, and strategies.

But the circumstances surrounding its delayed release and cautious framing seemed to go against the principles it set out – clear and accessible policies around drug use and harm reduction.

UUK’s survey research found that only half of students were aware of their provider’s drug policy – and the majority of these students anticipated that the approach would be punitive – even when it wasn’t. What use is a harm reduction policy if it is a secret?

The same is true within universities. If staff and students are not confident about approaches to health because of reputational risk, they need their senior staff and governing bodies to show leadership – because doing so might well save lives.