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March 15, 2007 - More than a decade ago, CASA convened a landmark Commission to assess the substance abuse situation at our nation’s colleges and universities.  The Commission issued two reports:  The Smoke-Free Campus in 1993 and Rethinking Rites of Passage in 1994.

In 2002, CASA reconvened and expanded the Commission, again chaired by Reverend Edward (Monk) Malloy, now President Emeritus, University of Notre Dame. 

Over the past four years, with guidance from the commission, CASA has conducted the most extensive examination ever undertaken of the substance abuse situation on America’s college campuses.  The purpose was to determine what, if any, progress has been made and what can be done to reduce alcohol, tobacco and other drug use among college students. 

The resulting report, Wasting the Best and the Brightest:  Substance Abuse at America’s Colleges and Universities, reveals not only a lack of progress, but rather an alarming public health crisis on America’s college campuses.

Since CASA’s Commission first examined substance use and abuse among college students in 1993, the situation on America’s campuses has deteriorated.  Alcohol and other drug abuse threatens not only the present well being of millions of college students, but also the future capacity of our nation to maintain its leadership in this world of fierce global competition.  

It’s time to get the “high” out of higher education.  The acceptance by administrators, trustees, professors and parents of this college culture of substance abuse is inexcusable. 

We are losing thousands of our nation’s best and brightest to alcohol and drugs—and we are robbing them and our nation of their promising futures.

The college culture of alcohol and other drug abuse is linked to poor student academic performance, depression, anxiety, risky sex, rape, suicide and accidental death, property damage, vandalism, fights and a host of medical problems. 

By failing to become part of the solution, Pontius Pilate college presidents, deans, trustees and alumni—and parents—have become part of the problem. 

Substance abuse on college campuses is not just an issue of public health.  Failure to act places the academic credibility of schools at risk and subjects them to liability for standing by in the face of foreseeable harm.

From 1993, the year of CASA’s original assessment, to 2005, the last year for which relevant data are available, there has been no significant reduction in the levels of drinking and binge drinking among college students.  Even more troubling, rates of riskier drinking--frequent binge drinking, being intoxicated, drinking to get drunk--have increased from 1993 to 2001, the latest year for which these data are available. 

But the drug abuse problem goes far beyond alcohol.  Since the early 1990’s, student abuse of prescription opiods, stimulants and tranquillizers has exploded.  Daily marijuana use among college students has more than doubled.  Use of drugs like cocaine and heroin is on the rise as well.

Alcohol and tobacco merchants aggressively market their products to young people.  Some parents enable student drinking and drug use by paying for it, supplying alcohol and prescription drugs, simply choosing to look the other way when their children start drinking or smoking marijuana in high school, and by underwriting substance-fueled occasions like spring break.  Many alumni set bad examples by excessive drinking at campus homecomings and athletic events and resist efforts to curb excessive drinking at campus clubs, fraternities and sororities.  Trustees neglect to examine the nature and extent of substance abuse among students and to demand action to address it.  College presidents ignore the problem as they concentrate on fundraising and faculty recruiting.

Parents who pay $40,000 to $50,000 a year for room, board and tuition should not have to worry that their daughters will become one of the hundred thousand victims of sexual assault and rape that take place on college campuses every year, or that their children will become one of the 700,000 students assaulted by drunk classmates, or even one of the almost 2,000 students who die from alcohol poisoning and alcohol related injuries.

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