WHAT'S THE BEST WAY TO FIGHT SUBSTANCE ABUSE?

According to Ohio University administrators, the university takes a broad
approach in addressing drug and alcohol abuse, but some critics say it
relies too heavily on law enforcement.

University programs once focused entirely on providing information about
drugs and alcohol, said Charlene Kopchick, director of the university's
Department of Health Education and Wellness. The university's efforts now
take an environmental approach, she said.

"An environmental approach is multi-faceted," Kopchick explained. "The
environmental approach (involves) working with everyone in the community."

The environmental approach is about changing culture and its influences,
said Kopchick, and addresses "the factors in an individual's environment
that make their decisions easy or hard to make."

"(These are) what enables us to make a positive decision," said Kopchick.
"(Or) what enables us to make a negative decision."

Some of the influences Kopchick identified were peer pressure, the
availability and accessibility of drugs and alcohol, and the consequences of
use and abuse.

Dave Baer, attorney for the OU Center for Student Advocacy, criticized the
university's programs and policies. Baer said he gives talks to students
about drugs and alcohol and questions them bluntly about their plans.

"How many of you are going to wait until you're 21?" Baer said he asks
students. "They look at me like I'm from another planet."

Students know the consequences of underage and high-risk drinking, Baer
said, but are often willing to risk arrest and criminalization.

"(OU's environmental approach) might be a piece of the overall puzzle," Baer
said. But if people are serious about reducing the problems associated with
drugs and alcohol, he argued, the solutions need to be based in treatment
and health services and much less in law enforcement.

Treatment and health services are what her department is all about,
according to Kopchick. "We change the culture to make low-risk drinking the
acceptable and normative behavior," she said.

One important issue is that students often think drinking is more popular
among their peers than it really is, she said. Most students think others go
out to drink three to five times a week, Kopchick said, while in fact, she
said, most students say they only go out up to twice a week, and sometimes
not at all.

Challenging this perception can help decrease the peer pressure students
feel, Kopchick said. "What we're trying to do is get people's perception of
how people are behaving closer to the reality of how people are actually
behaving," she said.

The university also has worked with local bar owners, among others in the
community, she said, and coordinates with TEAM Athens, a group dealing with
substance abuse issues in the larger Athens community.

Baer did not completely dismiss the programs, but said they don't change the
fact that drug offenses usually put people on a track leading to prison or
to criminalization. This is especially true for poorer people, he said, who
have nothing with which to bargain or defend themselves.

Drug users are convenient targets, Baer said, but putting non-violent
offenders in prison doesn't help society.

"Relying on the police to solve this social problem is not going to work,"
Baer said. Law enforcement has been taking action against drug users for
over 30 years, he noted, with no end in sight.

"What is a better way of approaching all this?" Baer asked. "We shouldn't
have been building more prisons. We should have been building more treatment
centers."

Communities need to create a dialogue about drug and alcohol issues, Baer
said, and to come up with a clear mission for police that better addresses
the problems.

"That's where we've got to go," Baer said. "The police are under our
control." They need to take the community's direction, he maintained, and
not the other way around.

Lt. Steve Noftz of the OU Police Department voiced some similar ideas. "I
think that's what a good agency does," Noftz said, "work in cooperation with
their community.

"Enforcement's not going to fix any problem we have related to drugs," he
said. "But law enforcement and education and creative problem solving and
working as a team... (If we're) thinking outside of the box to address what
we have here on campus, we're going to have more success."

University police patrol residence halls, Noftz said, teaching people the
signs of drug use and dealing, and building relationships with the Residence
Life staff. The police cultivate informants as well, Noftz said, and
occasionally make controlled buys to catch drug dealers. Close to 200
arrests have been made for marijuana, narcotics or paraphernalia since 1999,
according to police statistics.

"But that's not how we measure our success," Noftz said. "Really each of
those calls is an opportunity; whether we seize drugs in those rooms through
a consented search, or we just talk to residents, those are opportunities
for us to educate."

Baer, however, spoke disparagingly about law enforcement's effects on young
people. If you're young in Athens, he said, "you can't go anywhere without
someone thinking that you're going to break the law."

Baer said he would not want to be under 21 and in Athens to save his life.

But police are not the whole problem, he acknowledged. Young people and
students often take too many risks when they're drinking, Baer said, and
sometimes they get hurt.

"That just puts more pressure on the university and the police to impose
more zero tolerance policies and make more arrests," Baer said.

Athens County Municipal Judge Douglas Bennett said that if people are
arrested in Athens, they might have serious problems, bad luck or just poor
judgment. "Unless you stand out like a sore thumb, you're not likely to get
arrested," Bennett said.

"Generally I don't see very many students, given the demographics of who
gets in trouble," Bennett added. The students who do show up are often the
type of people who succeed in recovery programs, he said.

"If you're talking about college students, you're already talking about an
exceptional portion of society," Bennett said. Students are often upwardly
mobile and introspective, the judge noted, and these are qualities that help
them deal with such situations.

People who have a history of crime often do poorly in recovery, Bennett
added.

Law enforcement does deter people from using drugs, Bennett said, especially
once people know they can be caught. OU's policies have an impact as well,
he said.

"The numbers are just there," said Bennett. "Especially whatever the
university is doing terrorizes these folks."

OU Dean of Students Terry Hogan said that when students violate the
university's drug policy, the incidents are dealt with on a case-by-case
basis. Usually some combination of action by OU Judiciaries and law
enforcement will occur, Hogan said.

"Students need to realize," Kopchick said, "that if they violate the Student
Code of Conduct, that has to be addressed. Does that mean they're expelled
from school? No."

If motivated people are placed in recovery programs, they will probably do
well, Judge Bennett said, but law enforcement may not be the whole solution.

"In terms of under-age alcohol (consumption), I'm not sure how much any law
enforcement is going to be effective," he said.