College Experiments Dangerous

-courtesy of google images

When many people think of college, especially aspiring students, they think of it as a time to cut loose, a time to let go. Perhaps the ever infamous “South Park” character “Chef” said it best in an older episode, “there’s a time and place for everything children,” the lovable mentor said. “And it’s called college.”

In a recent editorial in The University Echo Online, they discuss the fact that administrators are rejoicing that college campuses are gradually losing their stigmas as locations for drunken debauchery and drug use. Traditionally the article says, the college years were viewed as times of “few responsibilities” that students took advantage of to explore the “possibilities that would be unavailable to them once they entered the real world.”

Now, the piece goes on to claim, college campuses have become places for “judgmental chastity and restriction.” The true shock is when the article goes on to say that this may be a BAD thing, that these new restrictions will cause alums to experiment later in life and cause themselves more harm.

As a former police/court reporter at Washington State University, a college still recovering from its label as Playboy’s #1 party school in America some years ago, I am going to vouch for the fact that the drug use, sexual acts and excessive drinking have not actually tapered down, but instead gone underground. Sure, gone may be the times of 5-block wide parties that attract celebrities and leave houses in shambles, but there exists just as big a problem as ever.

I composed an article some months ago concerning the rise in cocaine use among students, a very dangerous trend indeed. It turns out that there has been a sharp decrease in the trafficking of party drugs such as Ecstasy and the new nationwide killer methamphetamine, as my source, Undersheriff Ronald Rockness, told me, but unfortunately there has been a dangerous spike in the use of cocaine, making it the next most popular drug after marijuana.

As it turns out, many students view cocaine to be cleaner and safer than “X” and “meth,” because of these drugs’ nature of being manufactured in homemade clandestine labs. This is a very dangerous attitude to hold towards the very mentally addictive and dangerous stimulant.

According to DrugFree, a popular anti-drug website, some of the side effects of cocaine use can include: high body temperature, paranoia, aggression, destruction of nasal tissue, and depression after quitting use.

These are some very dangerous side-effects for students to consider. It is very difficult I assume, to be a drug user of this magnitude and succeed in school. It is for this reason that I disagree with the Echo’s editorial. Administrators should be cracking down on these dangerous behaviors and have a right to embrace the decrease, if in fact it does occur. Some of these things are far too dangerous for students to experiment with, even once, as it may cause their future and current lives to be in danger.