Students now have information about a number of legal and illegal drugs at their fingertips, thanks to a collaboration between the University Health Center and Students for Sensible Drug Policy that has launched the university’s first harm reduction center.
The center, a display on the bottom floor of the health center, contains information pamphlets of about 10 different drugs — including heroin, LSD, Ritalin and cocaine — that seek to arm students with reliable and accurate knowledge of substances’ effects, said Brandon Levey, president of this university’s SSDP chapter.
“We don’t condone the use of drugs, but if people are going to do drugs, it’s better they have information and can do them safely,” he said. “It’s a harm reduction approach.”
Levey said SSDP members began working with health center officials more than a year ago to establish a drug information center. Last week, their efforts came to fruition when the display was officially set up.
The pamphlets are produced by Safety First, a project by the nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance that supports “reality-based” — as opposed to zero-tolerance — drug education. They include information about the risks of taking a specific drug, as well as slang names, signs of use and a description of the high obtained by using the drug.
Levey said providing students with this information is a preferable alternative to the standard “abstinence-only” approach usually presented in programs.
“Study after study has shown that doesn’t work. It does more harm than good,” he said. “We’re providing safe and accurate information, so people can make their own decisions.”
And though this approach is the first of its kind to make its way into the health center, officials said it has been readily embraced.
“Early on, we decided that providing a space for students to access information about drugs and their potential consequences was to be a top priority for us,” Amanda Long, coordinator of the health center’s substance abuse prevention programs, wrote in an e-mail.
Although the materials were just set up, Long said she believes the display will be successful.
“My main hope is that it will serve as a catalyst that sparks conversation among students and staff about the importance of being informed about drug use,” she wrote.
Levey said students are bound to use its resources since it is the only one of its kind on the campus.
“I think it’s definitely information people ought to have but have trouble getting,” he said. “Once people know it’s there, they’ll come in and use it to their advantage.”
But students said that while having information available is beneficial, many said they won’t use it.
“I think it’s a good idea. I’m guess I’m just very pro-information,” sophomore business major Jacklyn Wong said. “I don’t know how much it’ll change people’s viewpoints. At this stage, people are rather informed already.”
Freshman information systems major Palash Padliya said he believes the location of the display in the health center will detract from its helpfulness.
“I don’t think people go to the health center for that,” he said. “Anything they can do is useful, though. It wouldn’t be useful to me personally, but it’s good that it’s there.”
kirkwood at umdbk dot com
