DRUG STATISTICS DO NOT INDICATE DRUG USE

Dear Editor:

The front-page article claiming that drug use on AU's campus is comparable
to last year ("Drug use on campus close to last year", 28 October) implies
an incorrect correlation between the statistics cited in the article and
the headline. The article used the amount of drug violation cases brought
to Public Safety as a measure of drug use on AU's campus, as well as
similar reports from other DC area schools. However, drug violations are
not an accurate measure of drug use on a given campus. Drug violations are
only an accurate measure of the amount of people Public Safety manages to
catch using drugs. In effect, the statistics only show how aggressively
Public Safety is pursuing drug cases. Many of us commit more drug
violations by ourselves in one school year than Public Safety caught for
the entire campus population during the 2000 calendar year. Most people
simply do not get caught. To claim anything about the level of drug use
based on the statistics from a law enforcement agency is a logical fallacy,
since the amount of reported cases of drug violations is not an accurate
measure of the actual amount of drug use.

Most students have a pretty good idea of amount people who use drugs and
alcohol on campus. If our absurd drug laws were to be actually enforced and
the Campus Police were to somehow catch most of the offenders, would the
University be willing to kick an overwhelming majority of students off campus?

Ethan Hirsh is a sophomore in the School of International Service and a
member of the Drug Reform Coordination Network (http://www.drcnet.org).