As the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill awaits word of whether drug use contributed to a UNC undergraduate's death last month, Duke officials continue to examine how best to prevent such a death here.
Twenty-year-old Daniel Walker, a UNC student majoring in communications and economics, was found dead in his Carrboro home Sept. 7. Although investigators will not complete toxicology reports for several more weeks, they believe drugs might have played a part in the death.
Officials at UNC said they are taking a wait-and-see approach before reacting to the death. Rather than quickly change the school's drug policies, they are evaluating the several prevention and outreach programs already in place.
"It's a tragedy, and we just try to view the situation and see if we can do anything differently, see if we can strengthen any of our prevention programs," said Dean Blackburn, coordinator of substance abuse programs at UNC.
Like UNC, Duke has a variety of drug education and prevention programs, coordinated mostly through the Healthy Devil and Counseling and Psychological Services. Health officials give presentations throughout the year, and this year's freshman orientation included a forum on the effects of drugs and alcohol. CAPS also assesses for possible treatments for students found using drugs.
Jeff Kulley, a CAPS staff psychologist specializing in drug and alcohol use, said every college campus is vulnerable to drug overdoses, but that education and treatment programs will not likely change because of Walker's death.
"We have both preventative approaches and clinical treatment available," Kulley said. "Prevention-wise, we provide programming. Often it's included with programming on alcohol, where we'll try to educate people on drugs and the dangers of drug use."
Kulley said it is common to combine drug education with discussions of alcohol because many substances are often used together in social settings. Some feel that alcohol issues tend to overshadow drug use, however, and that more education is needed on all substance abuse.
"I think one of the main issues with drugs versus alcohol is a public perception or reaction to drug use as opposed to alcohol consumption," said Sue Wasiolek, assistant vice president for student affairs. "The laws related to alcohol tend to be more overlooked and more excused than those relating to other drugs."
In last year's Core Alcohol and Drug Survey, which surveyed 159 Duke undergraduates, 22.4 percent said they had used marijuana in the past 30 days and 6.4 percent said they had used other drugs in the past 30 days. Kulley cautioned, however, that the survey included a small sample and was not comprehensive. Past national surveys have shown that about 80 percent of students drink alcohol.
Police suspect the painkiller OxyContin may have been involved in the UNC student's death. OxyContin has recently become more popular for recreational use, and a spate of drugstore robberies nationwide have been attributed to people looking for the drug. Kulley said the drug's popularity may mask serious dangers.
"I think that one rough indicator of the danger of substances is how they're taken, and OxyContin is something that people are grounding up and snorting or injecting," Kulley said. "Drugs that are snorted or injected pose a greater risk of overdose because they have a direct line to the blood supply."
Students did not list OxyContin as one of the most-used drugs in last year's Core survey.
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