With all the recent talk of student binge drinking, it’s easy to forget that alcohol is one of the more innocent substances widely abused on campus.

This was evident on Friday, when three UW students were arrested for dealing and conspiring to deal Ecstasy. What was really shocking was how much the three planned to move on campus: Police seized 11,000 pills and say the trio had plans to sell 100,000 doses on campus.

Unfortunately, UW seems to be handling the matter just as it is handling campus alcohol abuse: Placing all the blame on the suppliers.
Don’t get us wrong. If convicted, the drug dealing students should be punished for a very long time. We have no sympathy for drug dealers, just as we have no patience with bartenders and house party hosts that over serve. But what UW should be more concerned with is not that there are students on this campus willing to sell drugs, but that there is such a strong demand for drugs and alcohol.
Nobody should be surprised that UW students abuse substances other than alcohol. Buried in the oft-cited Harvard binge-drinking survey are some rather alarming results on other drug use, most notably marijuana. Several UW students have died of drug overdoses in the past two years, easily rivaling, if not surpassing, the number of students who died in alcohol-related accidents. In its ongoing efforts to reduce alcohol abuse, we encourage the administration to not forget the effect of other, more dangerous substances abused by UW students.
The administration should also realize that drugs, like alcohol, are not a problem UW can hope to regulate away. Time and again we have lamented that administrators prefer regulating instead of addressing the underlying causes of alcohol abuse. But after this bust, we hope UW administrators will be horrified at students’ lackadaisical attitude toward all substance abuse; not just alcohol. Maybe then the administration will shift its focus from regulating away alcohol abuse to changing campus attitudes and culture.