By
Jeremy Duda
Arizona Daily Wildcat
UA official does not consider ecstasy to be big problem on
Drug use statistics at the UA show that marijuana use is on the rise, which contradicts the results from an annual report recently released by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.
The study, which concentrated on drug use among teens in the seventh through 12th grades, showed that marijuana use is down 1 percent from last year, while ecstasy use has doubled since 1995.
The Wellness Survey, a survey conducted by Campus Health Services every spring, is used to measure drug use at the University of Arizona. The most recent survey, done in spring 2000, found that 20.9 percent of a sample population of 856 had smoked marijuana in the last 30 days.
This is a slight jump from 18.2 percent in 1999.
Unlike the Partnership's report, however, the Wellness Survey does not measure ecstasy use, instead lumping all other drugs into one category.
"Our actual percentage for other illegal drugs has always been very low," said Carolyn Collins, director of health promotion and preventive services, a division of Campus Health.
"There are a small percentage of students that use ecstasy, but we don't see it as the big problem it's being portrayed as in the media," she said.
Use of other drugs among students at the UA rose to 6.9 percent in 2000, up from 5.9 percent in 1999. Collins said she did not know if the jump was caused in part by rising rates of ecstasy use.
A group of 65,000 students polled nationwide by the Core Institute at the University of Southern Illinois in 1999 showed the use of designer drugs, a category which is generally regarded as including ecstasy, to be 2.5 percent.
It is unknown if the numbers for designer drugs at the UA are similar to the Core Institute study because the Wellness Survey does not differentiate between drugs except for marijuana. But some students say that ecstasy use may be more widespread than is generally believed by Campus Health.
"Ecstasy is quickly becoming the gateway drug," said Leigh Taylor, a psychology senior. "I see all these people that never did drugs in high school doing ecstasy now."
However, others do not think drugs are a problem on campus.
"I only know a couple of people who do ecstasy, but they do it a lot," said Kris Brown, an electrical engineering sophomore. "People either don't do it at all or they do it all the time."
Although the view that ecstasy use is very widespread at the UA is not held by Health Promotion and Preventive Services, Collins acknowledged that ecstasy could become more of a problem here.
"If this trend in high school students continues, they will be more likely to use these drugs in college," Collins said.
The university is not as concerned with slight jumps in drug use as it is with student alcohol abuse, which is about 10 percent lower than the national average, Collins said.
