Student peer-to-peer communication is “crucial” in tackling drug use on campuses, experts said.
Nic Beech, vice-chancellor of Middlesex University, said the Universities UK drug-use task force that he chairs is trying to understand the use of drugs in the student population and how the sector can proceed to ensure that policies are successful.
Speaking at a Westminster Higher Education Forum conference, he outlined the key design principles of a sector framework encompassing supply and demand reduction, support, treatment and recovery.
“The crucial thing here is peer-to-peer communications,” he said. “The evidence shows that as soon as something sounds as if it’s preaching, as if it’s top-down, as if it’s authoritarian then it typically fails to reach the very part of the student population that we hope to reach.”
