Use, abuse and misrepresentation

The tables are empty. The service is so fast that I don’t even need a buzzer. Apparently, this is the golden hour in which I don’t have to wait for food at the Loop. The cashier and I joke about why I’m here alone at 11:30 p.m. on a Friday.

“I’m meeting up with a friend who’s getting McDonalds,” I tell him.

“Su-ure,” he says sarcastically. “Well, at least you got it to go.” Laughing, he hands me my food as I secretly try to look less like a loser for not being out partying.

On any given weekend night, many Duke students are not sober. Although by far the most abused drug at Duke and most college campuses, alcohol is not the only recreational drug that’s being consumed tonight. Behind closed doors, marijuana use follows, trailed by cocaine and a variety of obscure and designer drugs. In 2007, USA Today reported that about a third of college students had used marijuana and almost half of all college students engaged in binge drinking at least once a month.  

Although the stigma and barriers to access of many illegal drugs is high, alcohol—an unclassified legal substance—seems to sneakily get by branding itself with the air of coolness and passing itself from Solo cup to Solo cup. Associated with kicking back and watching the game and bottle service in the cosmopolitan clubs of New York City, alcohol has both an elite status in our culture and positive associations with everyday enjoyment. The guise of its relatively safe nature, however, seems to slip past the dangers that linger in the back of our minds.

We refer to drugs and alcohol as two separate entities, as if alcohol is so benign that it is barely even considered a drug anymore. Arguments for its social acceptability based on its legality are flawed, especially when a large percentage of drinkers are underage, and the legal classification system for illegal drugs does not always accurately represent the actual harm inflicted onto users and their societies. From order of most to least harm, drugs are classified as Schedule I, II III, IV and V. The lower numbers are supposedly the most dangerous and usually have the harshest penalties for possession or distribution. Schedule I includes heroin and cocaine but also LSD and Ecstasy which, like marijuana, have been associated with medical benefits.

In 2007, researchers evaluated 20 substances based on physical harm, social harm, physiological dependence, psychological dependence, intoxication levels, health care costs, and other factors. On average, alcohol ranked as the fifth most harmful drug, exceeding tobacco in ninth place and cannabis in 11th place. It also ranked above LSD, which was in 14th place. Ecstasy, which supposedly causes holes in one’s brain, was the third least harmful drug. Heroin and cocaine ranked first and second respectively, in most harmful drugs.

The results from this study are incongruous with the general behavior, attitudes and policy regarding drug use on our campus and across the nation. Researchers “saw no clear distinction between socially acceptable and illicit substances. The fact that the two most widely used legal drugs lie in the upper half of the ranking of harm is surely important information that should be taken into account in public debate on illegal drug use.”