Almost every college student knows the suspense of waiting for a response from the plug. It’s never immediate or certain, either waiting for hours as plans stall around an unreliable supply or going without altogether.
It’s a humorous cliche of the college experience, but it points to something much more serious.
If you’re a student, my guess is that you’ve never read Binghamton University’s Code of Student Conduct — it’s okay, I haven’t either. That’s because it exists less as something students actively engage with, but more so as a contractual agreement on rules. Within those rules, the possession and distribution of drugs like marijuana, prescription drugs not prescribed to you and other illegal substances is strictly prohibited.
But drugs aren’t absent from campus. While the University’s code of conduct attempts to eliminate supply and demand, it instead reshapes it — pushing the drug market into underground networks that are defined by uncertainty and risk.
What happens on college campuses like our own is simply a small-scale version of a much larger policy failure — the War on Drugs.
In June 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a “War on Drugs” following a rise in recreational drug use, describing substance abuse as “public enemy number one.” And in 1986, President Ronald Reagan and Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which established mandatory minimum prison sentences for particular drug offenses and dramatically expanded punitive enforcement.
The War on Drugs is still built upon an assumption that strict prohibition eliminates drug use, but it doesn’t take a scientist or a politician to know this is not the case.
Drugs don’t disappear. Rather, they adapt to legislation efforts, thriving in an unregulated, illegal market where the risk of harm dramatically increases. So, what’s the alternative — let people harm themselves with obviously dangerous substances? Not exactly.
Decriminalization, which aims to remove criminal penalties for possession and personal use of substances and replace them with civil measures, offers a different approach.
Referring back to the University’s Code of Student Conduct, it explicitly states that the “following behavior is prohibited,” before listing drug-related offenses like possession, personal use, purchasing and distribution of a variety of controlled substances. But for many students, the issue isn’t whether something is prohibited or not — it’s that it has to be hidden.
So, while your patience dwindles waiting for the plug to respond, remember — the plug isn’t the problem. The plug is simply the result of a system that forces an entire market into the shadows.
But stick with the idea of the plug for a moment. You wanted a joint for game night — something casual, nothing extreme. But now you’ve waited hours for a response to no avail. You already got all the snacks to fulfill everyone’s munchies, but the night begins to fall flat. So, you resort to a new option, a different guy you’ve never bought from before.
And even though it’s just a joint — something legal in many states — there’s still a problem. You’re buying from an uncertain dealer, with no way to verify what you’re getting. There’s zero regulation, no accountability and certainly no guarantee of safety. This isn’t just hypothetical; research from The BMJ states that many drugs available in a criminalized market are “super strong varieties,” which are especially dangerous for inexperienced users like college students.
Now consider something more serious than a joint, like heroin — a substance that carries a far greater risk of addiction and overdose. For a moment, I’d like you to imagine a hypothetical on-campus market for heroin. There would be a limited number of suppliers, so let’s say you could either purchase from Mountainview or Dickinson. Both communities would attempt to gain control over an entire market of student consumers. These drug-filled communities were born out of the Code of Student Conduct and its efforts for prohibition, as it is they who get to control the underground market, not the University.
As a result, this hypothetical heroin market is now defined by unregulated, low-quality and dangerously addictive products, in which students all across campus are caught with the possession of this product. Then, what results from those low-level possession cases is the onslaught of student disciplinary action. And because there are so many cases, the student judicial process stagnates. This hypothetical domino effect closely resembles the actual effects of criminalization at a national level.
So, what could the University — or the government — actually do to prevent this? It’s clear that more punishment isn’t the answer. Decriminalization, however, might be.
To be clear, decriminalization is not the same thing as legalization. Legalization is the removal of all penalties for the possession and personal use of a substance, meaning a substance can be legal while remaining regulated. Decriminalization, on the other hand, removes criminal charges, often replacing them with civil penalties like fines or educational programs.
In a decriminalized system, users are not prosecuted and do not carry a criminal record. So, for the typical stoners out there or more casual users, decriminalization challenges the logic of punishing behavior in a way comparable to other legal substances like alcohol or tobacco. But for those seriously struggling with addiction, decriminalization seeks to shift our understanding of drug abuse — not as flawed morals or a crime that deserves punishment, but as a health crisis to be managed.
This doesn’t mean the University will announce the opening of a brand new on-campus dispensary in the University Union. It simply means that it would be a shoulder to lean on, a shift toward a support system. It’s been shown in the Netherlands, for instance, that decriminalization can work by placing a greater emphasis on treatment, rather than punishment. As a result, the Netherlands has hardly registered any new heroin addicts.
At its core, this issue isn’t just about drugs, but about human behavior that we can’t eliminate. As mentioned earlier, what happens in college campuses is simply a small-scale version of a much larger reality, one in which prohibition has been relied upon as the primary solution, despite all of its shortcomings.
But we’re faced with a fork in the road. We could continue down the path we’re on, which will only produce more consequences the further we go. Or, we could try the other direction — acknowledging the problem and helping those struggling.
If the goal is to reduce harm, then we have to ask ourselves whether our current system is actually doing the right thing. Because drugs won’t go away — that’s no longer the question. It’s whether the way we choose to confront the problem does more harm than good.
Ronan Goddard is a sophomore majoring in philosophy, politics and law.
Views expressed in the opinions pages represent the opinions of the columnists. The only piece that represents the view of the Pipe Dream Editorial Board is the staff editorial.