ILLEGAL DRUGS CROP UP ON CAMPUS

Although Illegal Drug Use Is Not Rampant At USC, There Is Enough To Make
Students And Administrators Nervous.

Some students can't sleep because of a loud party next door. But others
can't sleep because their roommates are up all night after taking drugs.

Users

"I think that the primary drug on campus is marijuana and then cocaine,"
said Claire*, a sophomore. She does marijuana, but also knows people who do
cocaine.

Most of the students on campus do not use drugs everyday, but a lot of
students probably do some experimenting, she said.

The students she knows who do cocaine are mostly graduate students and
people who graduated from USC, but still live in the area.

Claire said that the average student starts using marijuana during their
senior year of high school or in their first year of college.

"Being a pot-head has its own culture" and is a "tight-knit community," she
said.

She usually smokes pot in someone's apartment with a group of people.

Her group of friends is "not friends because we smoke, we just smoke
together,." she said.

Pot "is an outside motivator to keep you organized," she said.

Instead of being a distraction from her schoolwork, she believes marijuana
use "increases your time and money management skills" because you save money
to buy the drugs you want and make sure that you do your homework on time so
you have time to smoke pot that night.

Marijuana was "never made illegal for good reasons, (it was) made illegal
for political reasons," she said.

Marijuana is not in the same class as cocaine and heroin, but "is very
similar to the two legal substances in this country," alcohol and
cigarettes, in terms of usage and the way it affects people's lives, she
said.

Katie, a sophomore, said that last year her roommate used cocaine along with
some prescription drugs that she would crush and use.

In the beginning of the year she said that the problem with her roommate
using drugs was not that bad, but as the year progressed "it got pretty
ugly."

People doing drugs for recreational purposes is one thing, but if they are
addicted it affects other people, Katie said.

Her roommate would be up all night, leaving the lights on, talking on the
phone and listening to music after she had used drugs.

"We weren't really close friends (and) she obviously didn't care about me,"
Katie said.

Along with her other roommates, Katie said they felt like it was "not our
place to report her."

At USC, "people have the money to do what they want" and if this means that
they want to do drugs "they have the means to," she said.

By the end of the year, she no longer noticed all of her roommate's drug use
because she became "hardened to it," she said.

The Extent Of The Problem

"I think that drug use and abuse is a problem" for students on campus, said
Bradford King, the director of Student Counseling Services.

Dr. Mary Andres, a clinical psychologist for the Student Counseling
Services, said that the top three drugs abused at USC are alcohol, marijuana
and cocaine, in that order. Alcohol is by far the most used substance on
campus.

Bingeing is one of the main problems on college campuses, King said.

With college students, there is a difference between students who use
alcohol and drugs daily and those who abuse them by bingeing, although both
can cause permanent brain damage and can get in the way of relationships and
doing work, he said.

King said that he does not believe that USC is any better or worse than
other college campuses. According to some studies USC students binge less,
he said.

According to the USC National College Health Assessment Report from 2000 and
2001 done by Health Promotion and Prevention Services, within the school
year before the study was done, 2.5 percent of undergraduate students and
0.8 percent of graduate students at USC said that they had a substance abuse
problem.

Getting the Fix

"It's easy anywhere to get drugs" because every campus has drugs, Andres
said.

The fact that USC has students with money and lots of fake IDs and because
Los Angeles is a big city probably makes it easier for students to get
drugs, she said.

"This is a very entrepreneurial community. It's the issue of supply and
demand. If there's a demand, the supply is going to find its way," said
Aaron Graves, chief of public safety. DPS works to "dry out" drug sources
around campus.

Claire said that there are usually "tons of people to call" to get the
marijuana she wants.

"The problem (time) is always at the beginning of the school year and right
after Christmas," she said.

Those are the hardest times to get drugs because the people who sell the
drugs have a huge surge of people who want to buy.

Prices for marijuana are usually high at the beginning of the semester, but
by mid-semester she can call four people on a Friday night and "see who has
the cheapest price."

"You buy it when you need it and try to make it as cheap as possible," she
said.

Even though drugs are used on and around campus "you cannot incarcerate all
the violators of possession and use of marijuana -- jails probably wouldn't
hold them all if you arrested every last one of them," Graves said.

DPS does what they can do, working especially to deal with the most severe
cases, Graves said.

"With traffic or distribution of drugs or blatant utilization of drugs, we
make contact with LAPD. They become the key investigators of it. They are
the lead and we assist them in any way we can," Graves said.

Effects of Use

King said that most students use drugs and alcohol to temporarily solve
other problems, such as anxiety and depression.

"Alcohol is number one on this campus," King said. "(It's) the American drug
of choice."

Alcohol is a problem on most college campuses because not all college
students are of a legal age to drink, even though there are some who do.

"People act out when they are drunk," Andres said.

On the other hand, people using marijuana often feel like they have wasted
so much time doing things that they really did not want to do or not doing
things that they should have been doing, Andres said.

King also believes that marijuana is the #2 drug on campus.

"I haven't noticed that this year has been any better or worse" in terms of
drug use on campus, he said.

Drug use on campus might not be reported because of the possible
punishments, said John Matthews, Crime Prevention and Community Education
Unit program manager for the USC Department of Public Safety.

"We don't see evidence of (cocaine and other hard drugs) but we are not
naïve to believe that it's not taking place on campus," Graves said.

"I think that (drug use) is a societal problem (that has) made its way into
the university community," said Denzil Suite, the associate dean for student
affairs and the executive director of Residential and Greek life.

One of the reasons that drugs and alcohol might be used in the dorms is
because students come to college and "want to experiment," he said.

"I think that it is actually harder in the dorms" to use alcohol and drugs,
compared to being in your own apartment off-campus because there are so many
people always around in the residence halls, Suite said.

"If people are inclined to use and do drugs, they will find a mechanism to
make that happen regardless of where they live," Suite said.

Residential advisors do find students using drugs but it is not an
overwhelming problem, Suite said.

"I hear reports that some of our student have or believed to have had
(date-rape drugs)," King said.

There have some students who have reported that they have been subjected to
these types of drugs, he added.

This type of problem is not frequently reported at USC, he said, but even
one student is one too many.

Types of Drugs

Along with alcohol, marijuana and cocaine, some college students use speed
or methamphetamine, to stay "up", a variety of mild tranquilizers or
roofies, and club drugs.

Club drugs include alcohol, LSD (acid), MDMA (ecstasy), GHB, GBL, Ketamine
(Special-K), Fentanyl, Rohypnol, amphetamines and methamphetamine, according
to the National Institute on Drug Abuse Web site.

Graves and Matthews said that DPS has seen people on campus using the drugs
Rohypnol, GHB -- taken voluntarily, ecstasy and variations of the drug,
marijuana and hard drugs like cocaine along with alcohol use.

Rohypnol and other "roofies" are sometimes used as "date rape" drugs because
of its sedative-hypnotic effects including muscle relaxation and amnesia.

Rohypnol, the trade name for flunitrazepam, is not approved in the United
States and its importation is banned, according to the NIDA Web site.

GHB (gamma-hydroxybutyrate), however, has surpassed Rohypnol in its use of
being a "date rape" drug, according to the NIDA Web site.

GHB is invisible when dissolved in water, odorless, and has only a slightly
salty taste but is indiscernible when dissolved in soda, liquor or beer,
according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Web site.

When ingested, it causes a feeling of euphoria and intoxication.

Paula Swinford, director of Health Promotion and Prevention Services, put
the USC National College Health Assessment Report from 2000 and 2001.

The results show that there is a different perception of drug use on campus
compared to the actual number of students who drink and use drugs, she said.

"Things get hyped up a lot," but the study shows that not all USC students
are doing drugs or drinking, Swinford said.

Of the students that responded, 64 percent of undergraduates had never used
marijuana, 94.7 percent had never used cocaine, and 20.9 percent of
undergraduates never drank alcohol.

For graduate students, 60.5 percent drank alcohol, 6.8 percent used
marijuana and 0.2 percent used cocaine at least once in the past month.

The percentages of graduate students who have never used alcohol, marijuana
and cocaine are 22.1, 75.2 and 95.4 percent, respectively.

Last names of students have not been used in this story to protect their
anonymity.