welcome to the campus of san jose state university in this edition of equal time. i'm your host, journalism school director bob rucker. [theme music] this year, san jose state university had its first case of heroin overdose. all across the country we're hearing about these problems on campuses nationwide. today, we have two in-depth discussions about the problem.

[theme music] welcome back to this edition of equal time from the hd studios in the school of journalism and mass communications at san jose state. today, our focus is on drugs on the college campus. let's meet our guests. hi, i'm michael o'brien, i'm an addictions specialist and i work with people in private practice who are trying to overcome drug and alcohol problems. my name is pete decena, i'm the chief of the university police department here at san jose state. my name is jose bautista and i'm a senior here at san jose state university. and i'm shannon cruz and i'm the student correspondent for the show. alright, thank you all for being here today. you know, we should set the table for this discussion by talking about real situations. shannon, you wanted to do this story because you've had some visual experiences. tell us about that. yeah, i've been on-- i've been on-- well, i've lived on the campus as a freshman in the dorms and i've been going to school since then and i've noticed in the dorms drug use is pretty popular.

well, i've had experience with drug use-- came in contact with it in high school. so i noticed a lot of people that were in the dorms never did anything. they didn't know what kind of drugs-- what drugs were, pretty much. so living out here in the dorms, by themselves, i noticed a lot of my friends go into drug use, got into trouble-- drug use in the dorms. and, as i've just been getting older, i've just noticed it's pretty popular here on campus. so i thought it was a good idea to kind of get the word out there that it is a danger. drug use shouldn't be on campus at all and just what kind of-- what we can do to prevent students, and what causes students to do drugs: the pressures, academic pressures, and also social pressures. and we'll talk about those pressures and thank you for doing the story. and we're not just talking about marijuana. yeah. we're talking about heavier drugs? yeah, like mdma, cocaine. i'm not too sure if heroin or meth is pretty popular on campus with students. i know, like, you know, other people that--

'cause it's an open campus...but i know, like, 'cause of a lot of the events that we have, ecstasy is a pretty-- pretty prevalent drug here on campus. very good now. chief, i know that we've talked about the dormitories here but you've also made a point of saying, "things come on to the campus as well." correct. we're an open campus. we're in the middle of a major urban downtown environment, so we do have a lot of folks that are going through campus that have drugs and paraphernalia and my officers do quite a few stops and come up with quite a bit of drugs and contraband. and let's help the public understand. privacy, even in a public institution, you can't just stop people at the borders of this campus and say, "ok, let me see what's in your pockets? are you carrying any drugs?" you're not allowed to do that. correct. we have to adhere to the law and everyone has certain rights and responsibilities. so it typically develops-- they have to have probable cause to do it but, you know, unfortunately a lot of times the people that the officers come in contact with are, i mean, clearly under the influence and/or there's some other violation

associated, which gives the officer the right to search them and then discover the contraband. is this more prevalent than alcohol or is this worse? you know, i would say that actually alcohol is our biggest contraband problem on campus. alcohol is a big problem, but we do have a lot of drugs, as shannon mentioned. and even as of last night, we had, for the first time in my experience here, a student that-- it was a heroin overdose and... on campus? on campus, in the dorms. the student is actually on a ventilator so we're not sure what the outcome is of that. and i've heard, in talking to the other chiefs, other csu chiefs, that up in sacramento state, heroin is a big problem. and it hadn't reached, to our knowledge, other campuses but this was an eye-opener that we actually had a student that od'd on heroin. so talking about this is very important. very important. and we hope that that student will be ok, but let's ask our student over here. when you hear something like that is it haunting, is it scary? i'm sure the audience is a little taken aback. of course.

i mean, heroin is a heavy drug. i would never expect any student with a college education to overindulge on a drug like that. that's a drug that does not belong in a, you know, college environment. it's a heavier drug, obviously. obviously marijuana and alcohol are two of the most used drugs in the college environment. i would never expect heroin to be a drug that is just used mainly by just college students like me, like ourselves. does it scare the student body, though? because managing stress i understand, but alcohol and drugs have never ever been the best way to do that. mmhm. so why would students opt to go that way? honestly, i want to say the overindulgement of it. well, heroin as a drug i don't feel it's just-- i don't feel it's a widespread thing. i feel it's a personal thing. i feel like if a student is, you know, overindulging on that heroin, it's kind of a personal thing. it shouldn't be that big a matter. i feel like it's just in an individual basis. heroin is not a popular drug among college students, it's not a drug that...

of course, already given. it's not accessible drug to college students. college students don't mainly want to, you know, indulge not heroin, not yet. i don't know anybody that uses heroin, personally. i feel it's not a widespread thing among college students. i can see you want to jump in. go for it. i don't think a lot of people just decide one day that they will be a heroin user. i think a lot of times what happens is maybe that person sustains an injury, and they get an opiate-based medication prescribed to them like vicodin or percocet, sometimes oxycontin. or they've had a family member that that's happened to that didn't use the medication and so they're just keeping them in the house and the prescription, you know, in the medicine cabinet. and they take one, and they feel high from it, and they begin taking those pills regularly, or trying to get them from their doctor. and then the doctor eventually cuts them off because the regulation and laws surrounding that are getting very serious. so once that gets cut off, those opiate addicts really turn

to the streets to find a.. a bigger... a supplement. right. which is usually heroin, and it's actually less expensive than the prescription forms. so, i don't think a lot of people just make the leap from marijuana or alcohol to heroin. they tend to come in from these other routes, where, you know, it's taking a prescription that your doctor gives you because you have a broken ankle-- doesn't necessarily seems dangerous but if you're on those for several months, trying to get off them is not always easy. and you know, parents and family members are watching this program and they're thinking, "college is dealing with that level of drug use?" who is talking to these students and giving them good advice? how do we get that advice to young people? well, i think it begins with education of the student population. i mean, just talking about heroin-- actually, about 3% of the full-time student population in the u.s. uses oxycontin. very powerful-- three percent. three percent. very powerful opiate-based medication

and when they can't get any more they go to heroin. but, i think there's been discussion about student education programs, possibly during orientation and things when people are coming in. there are other substances like adderall now. lots of people who are prescribed adderall, about 70% of them begin abusing other drugs later in life. and adderall was intended for? adhd, add problems. and a lot of students use it because they think it helps them study better. but it's actually a very potent amphetamine, and when you can't get adderall any more you may turn to something like methamphetamine. it's another, you know, sort of indirect route into a much heavier drug. this sounds very scary, so i can see why you wanted to do this story. but how do you get-- how do you cross that line from, 'don't do it, it can hurt you physically, it can harm your future' to 'well, i need it, i have to get through the stress, i have to cope.' how do you do that? yeah, i feel like in college we do have a lot of stresses.

um, and i feel like a lot of students, like on the weekends you know, they're with their friends and their friend has drugs. well, it's a way to escape the stress that you had the whole week of school and work. and i feel like that's why it's really-- like, a lot of college students use it and a lot like drugs. and i think it's really interesting that you talked about the heroin because i had no idea that college students were even using heroin. and to hear than an overdose actually happened in the dorms, it makes you kind of think, 'well, what was that student going under that he had to use heroin, or he wanted to use heroin,' you know. and i think it's-- it's all about education and educating the student community. during freshman orientation, i feel like i was more educated on alcohol abuse than i was on drug use in college. and so, as a freshman living on the dorms, you don't really think about stuff like that. you don't think about the harmful effects that drugs can have. yeah, you hear about it but, until you actually come in contact with it, you don't understand what it could do to you. sure. drug use, alcohol use, nothing unusual about hearing about that since we were in college

and well-before we were in college. but i hear a criticism that i don't understand and i want you to help me with this. young people are weaker today and they can't handle the stresses of college. go after that. i don't believe that. i believe-- i just believe-- i think drugs are more tolerable nowadays than, you know, a couple of years back. i think a lot more people use drugs this generation than the past two. marijuana usage is obviously, you know, it's a lot bigger. you know, the legalization of marijuana is obviously becoming tolerable. i just-- i just feel that it's more ok to use certain drugs like marijuana. i think alcohol is a lot more-- i think a lot more college students use it than in the past years. i just think it's a lot more tolerable. i don't believe they have a lot more to cope with, i believe [unclear] has been, you know, at the same basis. i think it's been as stressful as it's always been, i don't believe a lot has changed. i just think it's a lot more tolerable drug-wise. and we used to hear it was a slippery slope, back in the 70s and 80s.

start with marijuana, it will go to cocaine, it'll then lead to harder drugs. and we're seeing now the harder drugs at this time. but, what stops us in our tracks that makes us understand that we don't necessarily need a coping mechanism known as a drug? how do we get that point across to young people? because stress management is going to be the rest of their life and everything we do we're going to have to deal with that. but we all don't turn to drugs to manage our stress. right. i think addiction really starts out as the pursuit of pleasure: going to parties, hanging out with friends, doing things on the weekends, trying to relax. but it really begin-- or it ends as the avoidance of pain. so, as people are partying and they are racking up wreckage and their grades are beginning to go down and they're having problems with their family, they may not think that just a little bit of marijuana is helping them numb the pain from that and they may step it up. they can also become desensitized to it and need a better high by going to a more powerful chemical.

and, a lot of people also, i think, it opens their mind. just taking something like marijuana, which they were taught in elementary school is bad for them, and they have it and say, "well, this isn't so bad, you know, this actually feels pretty good, maybe i will try the ecstasy or the molly or one of these oxycontin pills." and then they feel that rush and it's a very powerful rush in the brain and it's really hard for people, specially at the college age when their impulse control isn't fully developed in the brain, to be able to override that. in addition, they are also taking all this input from their peers, which is the later-adolescent, early-adulthood time of your life. you're not taking input from your parents or the police department or professionals like myself, or sometimes even professors. you're going by what your peer group is doing. if they are all using and you want to be part of that group and be included, it's really easy to get caught in that trap.

i want to thank you all for being here, and shedding some light in this. i really appreciate the insight you shared because i think the public needs to know "we're working on it, but we need your help." up next, we'll learn more about a legal drug used for attention deficit disorder. but for some students, it's addictive and dangerous. we'll sit down with a new panel for a discussion with experts, talking about adderall. [theme music] welcome back to this edition of equal time, from the high definition studio in the school of journalism and mass communications at san jose state. today, our focus is on the use of the drug adderall on college campuses. let's meet our guests. i'm phil boissiere, a silicon valley adult adhd treatment specialist.

i'm lauren hidalgo, i'm an internist and co-medical chief of staff at the san jose state student health center. i'm erica altman, i'm a student here at san jose state and i am diagnosed with add and prescribed adderall for it. i'm hayley thenar and i'm a student here at san jose state. my name is christina rotar and i'm the student correspondent for the story. i thank you all for being here this morning and certainly i want to start by helping the audience understand this drug. we hear about adderall, but what's it for, purposefully? help us understand that. well, i think using adderall is something that is a first line of defense against treating adult adh-- in treating adult adhd just as well as adhd in children. i think for the pharmacological effects i think i'll turn more to the doctor and have her speak more to that. ok. uh, i would like to first of all say adderall is one of many stimulant medications and i think adderall is a buzzword that a lot of people know what that means but there are also other names

that we could go over if you're interested. well, what's it for? so it's to improve focus and staying on-task. it affects a couple of the nervous transmitters in the front part of your brain that can help with that, specifically dopamine and norepinephrine. very good, and it's diagnosed for people with what condition? oh, attention deficit disorder or attention hyperactivity disorder, which has a lot of criteria for diagnosis. a lot of people can be having a hard time focusing. it does not mean they have adhd, or add. so they're using it maybe...inappropriately? is that what you're saying? i mean, in the college setting? yes. um, yes. they're us-- well, they're using it to help them focus, which is what the drug is designed to do for those who have a deficit in focus, but it's not designed for people to use as a study drug. alright, very good. now, erica, you've identified the fact that you have been diagnosed

and you're taking the drug under doctor's care. how has it helped you? um, i mean, it definitely helps me study and focus more. i find myself getting distracted, getting sidetracked with a lot of things. so, yeah, my psychiatrist did recommend that i take adderall and i tried it for a while. um, i still take it occasionally but i find i don't really like the side effects of it. and what have you experienced? uh, it takes away my appetite completely. i don't like that i can't eat on it. um, i also have anxiety so it kind of brings out my anxiety more. does this sound familiar to you two when you hear this? yeah, i thi-think one of the things that's probably important, since a lot of people are going to be seeing this on tv, learning about this for the first time, is to clear up a lot of terms. so, the disorder is called attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and essentially it comes in three flavors. so, 'primarily inattentive,' 'primarily hyperactive, or the combined type. it sounds like what you're talking about is having the 'primarily inattentive' type.

the other issue with adhd is that many people have a comordid or co-existing anxiety, depressive, or substance abuse disorder. now, not everyone who experiences anxiety or depression who has adhd necessarily has a separate diagnosable condition, but they may find themselves what we call 'situationally depressed,' or 'situationally anxious, meaning: things are going wrong in my life, i'm anxious about it. things are going wrong and i'm depressed about it. sounds like what you're talking about is the possibility of having an actual co-existing anxiety condition, which may be exacerbated by the medication being used to treat your adhd. which is something that's very important and that's why we look to people who are actual professionals in treating adhd rather than kind of haphazardly using the medications. that's why i wanted everyone to try to be clear. if you're listening to this, as a general viewer, and you're wondering, "well, i have these attention issues, maybe i should get that drug." it's not that simple. no. how does it work?

how do you go in to ask about dru-- to talk about these issues? well, the diagnosis of adhd is, as he described, best done by an expert because it's not just a quick and simple online test that you can take. it's derived from many different tests that are used to look at focus, often looking back at childhood, how you did in school. it's harder for adults-- you can speak more on that-- because school records may not be available. uh, it's a very extensive evaluation. and, so many people have many different things that they're doing that-- anxiety, poor sleep...all those things affect focus. and so, trying to figure out how much of the focus issue is from adhd and how much from these other things, is important to know so that you do find the balance, because if it's largely anxiety-related, a stimulant medication is not going to help you that much. [laugh] it aggravates things.

this is a prescribed medication, this is not... this is a schedule 2. schedule 2 is a controlled substance prescription that has to be put on a tamper-proof prescription. it is indicated as having a high degree of abuse potential and addiction potential. and so it's a serious prescription. not everybody can do it. the doctor who prescribed it has to..um, have special properties with the drug enforcement agency-- special licensing i should say. and, i think most practitioners feel best if a psychiatrist does that because it is-- so many things that overlap and that can be contributing. i think that's very important to put out there at the beginning of this conversation because earlier i remember we talked a little bit off-camera about knowing the students who have not gone to see a doctor, like erica has, are using this on campus? yeah, generally they'll stay up all night. say they have a test tomorrow, they'll find adderall,

take it around-- they'll stay up as late as they can until they start getting tired, and then they'll take it, and then stay up all night, all day, completely zero sleep, take energy drinks to continue on their, like, adderall-high basically. and they get their task done, and then they'll take their test and they generally do pretty well from what i've seen from a few people. they do pretty well on it. they feel that it makes them smarter. they feel that it improves their grades. and that's why the take it. it's because they think it's going to make them smarter. gets them through, gives them an advantage, encourages them to "maybe this is one way to make sure i do well in my test or my project.." yeah, like a surefire way. that's what they think. but the dangers in that...are what? if an individual thinks, "well, that's a quick fix, i'll just go get that." how do you get it, if it's not prescribed? well, outside of the issue of where people get it for it not being prescribed, i think it's-- it's a little bit of a misnomer

that makes people smarter, because it doesn't. essentially all that it does is boost base levels of norepinephrine and dopamine in the brain. so it allows people to focus and pay better attention. essentially initiate and sustain activities at a level that maybe they wouldn't be able to if they weren't using it. and one of the issues that comes up with college students is you have people who have poor diets, lack of exercise, and lack of sleep. any of us, poor diet, lack of exercise, and lack of sleep, will affect your ability to focus, pay attention and excel. so, if someone's operating in an environment where they're tired or they're exhausted and they're merely taking a stimulant to boost them up to get of get them over the hump to be able to pass a test, we're really missing the mark. the conversation should also be about, 'well, why is it the case? why is it being used so much off label, without prescription, without permission. that type of thing, there's something underlying that's leading to that. and that's probably very important for us to talk about today. i think it is too and also the ability to get it if it's a prescribed medication, controlled.

how are these students getting this? uh, well, we'll ask the students but i will say as someone who used to prescribe it at my other job because we didn't have a psychiatrist able to do it, the students would always say, "no, i'd never lend it or sell it to anybody." yet it's a very... but they have it. the ones-- these are the ones getting prescribed, i asked. but other people get it-- clearly someone doesn't use it everyday but they may have pressure, peer pressure, if someone knows they have it: "hey, i know you have some, i'm desperate..." um, it also can be someone selling it for profit. um, and that's why we do try to have people who are professionals do the diagnosis, because it's very easy to overdiagnose that medication. um, you don't know what you're getting, unless you're an, i guess, an experienced casual amate-- casual user, excuse me. um, there's different strengths. there's long-acting, there's short-acting. so if you've never used it and you're borrowing it or buying it

from someone who's using a fairly high-dose, because they've been on it a long time and they've had some tolerance issues, you may be in for a surprise that you are not able to function, that your heart rate's speeding, you're very stimulated and can't-- you've overmedicated and you didn't even know. yes, and so, my understanding from students that i've asked who've had side effects is that they won't tell me who bought-- you know, i don't blame them. but they don't really say who sells it to them but it sounds like it's fairly easily available on campus to purchase or someone, friends, will lend it. i think maybe you can answer that. that's probably why christina wanted to do this. i think that definitely during midterms, finals, seasons, i think students who have adderall prescriptions become the new drug tycoons on campus. you can get a pill from $5 to $25, depending on the milligrams. and i personally have been in the library and i've seen someone come up to me and say, "hey, i'm selling adderall, do you want some?" perfect stranger. i didn't know the student at all. and so, i think that definitely, specially now with the technology and information that is

so readily available to students, we're almost expected to perform more than any students before. we are expected to really well because we have so much information accessible to us that we are constantly stressed and a student now-- we have different platform to perform. we are expected to maintain a certain gpa to stay in our major. we are expected to complete a 12-page paper in two weeks, for example. and that would be easy if a student only focused on school, but a lot of students do work part-time, a lot of students do have other responsibilities. and some research that i've done, a national survey on drug use and health for 2009 found that full-time students were twice as likely to take adderall non-medically than part-time students. so i think that alone speaks on measures for why students are taking adderall. they are constantly feeling this pressure and i think students resort to it because they're drowning

in their school work and they need something to sti-- like, help them stay awake for 24 hours, get over the hump, get over that test the next day, and kind of survive in college. she's put a lot out there and i think-- mhmm. let's unpack a little bit of that. um, students are dealing with more than they've ever had to deal with before. i remember being in college and i felt the exact same way, a few years ago, and i would say, "i don't understand why students perceive they have more to deal with than we had to deal with." each of us have gone through that process, but it's the perception of the moment. it's your life experience right now. how do we deal with that notion when students think, "this is more than anybody's had to deal with, so i should go ahead and get this." what would change that mentality? well, i think something that-- she brought the idea of technology, right? so technology can be someone's friend or it can hurt someone. so, for me, when i wrote my thesis in graduate school i was traveling to different libraries, scrolling through the, you know, records of the basement at stanford trying to find an article. that's a very mindful process. i'm looking for this number, in this place, turning these wheels

to find these documents, right? it's slow, it's calculated, and it's done with control. now, if someone gets online, they start looking for information, they do what i call 'bleeding out.' you're just getting pulled in a lot of different directions. it feels very frenetic. it's actually not good for focus and people without adhd start to feel, "well, wow, i have attention issues." well, actually it's because of the technology that's the problem in the first place. it's actually overwhelm this process for them. yeah, yeah. too much access to smart phones, too much access to the internet starts to erode our ability to be mindful and to be focused. so, i think she's bringing up a very important point in this larger context that we should be having about this. mhmm. and then when we talk to the students-- first let me go back to erica. earlier on we were talking about this pressure for some students to sell that and be a good friend, "come on, loan me some of that stuff." have you ever felt that, and more importantly how do you tell a fellow classmate 'no' when they're simply asking you to help?

yeah, i've definitely felt that pressure when i was first prescribed. my psychiatrist warned me and said, "keep it hidden, you don't want to really let people know that you're prescribed." i simply just say that it's for my own personal use. it's my medication that i need to take for my well-being. ok, and you felt no repercussion, no backlash from any students? i mean i felt the disappointment but i wanted to stay true to myself. mhmm, i don't blame you. and haley, when you hear about people that you know taking this, what do they say to you about why they have to have it? they usually say, "i'm stressed out, i have no time." a lot of it is "i have no time, i didn't have time to spend my week studying, i have one night to study, i need to focus right now." it's usually, "i'm tired, i have to stay up all night because my test is in the morning." it's-- usually they just say they have no time to study,

no time to time-management their life so they cram it all in to that one night and one pill that they're going to take and stay up all night to do it. we all have to be very cautious and careful. see a doctor, make sure it's prescribed, make sure it's appropriate for your use, and get the information before you put something in your body because it may or may not work. it-it... we're almost out of time. ok. so i'm afraid i'm going to have to wrap it up. but this has been very educational. thank you for doing this topic. and thank you. we hope you will come back for another edition of equal time.

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