Most students say no to drugs in favour of study

With all the negative stories in the media at moment - indeed always, what else is newscasting but a quotidian horror-show it's nice to find a story that contains a positive message. It seems students are increasingly saying no to drugs - apparently passing up on the narcotics to better concentrate on their studies.

The Higher Education Policy Institute, along with the university of Buckingham, recently conducted a survey, asking university students what they think about the drug problems on their campuses. The research clearly shows that the majority of students are concerned about drug use in universities, with most students thinking it has had an insidious negative effect.

To myself, a child of the psychedelic 60`s, this sounds incongruous, unbelievable - an absolute impossibility. Have things really changed so much - changed so much for the better I hasten to add - over the last few decades? Has the American slogan `Winners don`t use drugs` finally swam the Atlantic, only to be utterly convincing to this generation of students?

Of the 1,059 full-time undergraduate students questioned in the study, 88% think drug usage causes problems `for the mental health of the user`, and 68% are of the opinion that it cause issues for `society in terms of contributing to criminality`.

A surprising 71% of students said that they had never taken any kinds of illegal drugs, and nearly 40% were of the opinion that their university had a `problem` with drug use on campus. The director of HEPI, Nick Hillman, said the results were promising, and that students today are `more hardworking and less hedonistic` than we perhaps give them credit for.

I believe the attitude of students towards illegal drugs has substantially changed over the last few decades. In the 1970`s, when I was a student, the atmosphere of the swinging sixties still seemed to hang in the air. To be quite frank, Drugs were seen as cool by the majority of my peers, a way towards enlightenment and self development. This liberal opinion even extended to the faculty of the university: my philosophy teacher would regularly hint that we would learn more in one acid trip than during all of his lectures. With the hindsight of maturity I would like to think this speaks more to the deficiencies of his teaching than the mind expanding qualities of LSD, Timothy Leary`s advocations notwithstanding.

Many of the celebrities of the past decades were quite open in their use of illicit drugs. The phrase `sex drugs and rock and roll` hardly seems to apply to today`s pop stars, who appear to exemplify a fairly clean cut lifestyle. The heroes of my peer group during my student days were the punk rockers - hedonists who flagrantly displayed their narcotic lifestyles. It may be that students these days have more sober idols - and this is certainly to their benefit.

Another reason for a more restrained and studious lifestyle may simply be that degrees are now very expensive. If you are spending £9000 a year for your education you may be less inclined to miss lectures through intoxication and inebriation.

The results of a single study should never be taken as definitive however - in fact a recent report from the National Union of Students states that nearly 2 in 5 students are regular drug users. The report said that drug use amongst students is `a common, although infrequent, behaviour,` and that cannabis is the most widely used drug. Not all drug use is recreational though - my colleagues at university have told me that many students use `study drugs` to help them revise for extended periods. Along with stimulant drugs, which can help students stay awake and concentrate for extended periods of time, a new batch of drugs which claim to actually boost cognitive ability, called Nootropics, are widely used in some universities.

It is well worth keeping in mind that the study conducted by the HEPI and the University of Birmingham only concerns illegal drugs - students were not asked about their alcohol intake. So often we colloquially use the category `drugs` to only include illegal mind altering substances - but alcohol, or ethanol rather, the active ingredient in alcoholic beverages, is a potent psychoactive substance, that can be every bit as damaging to individuals and society as illegal drugs.