Drugs busts high in city

     This Saturday, hundreds of parents will flock to Milledgeville to visit their sons, daughters, and experience a taste of the quaint community that makes up GCSU.   Some GCSU students are divided as to how quiet and quaint this campus is.
     Two Thursdays ago, Public Safety received a call from Sodexho Dining Services reporting that an employee had stolen food.  When officers apprehended the suspect, Dexter Harden, in the 300 block of West Franklin Street, further research resulted in finding a small quantity of marijuana and cocaine in his possession.  The employee has since been dismissed from Sodexho.
     “We’re always making drug arrests, but they’re usually for small possessions,” GCSU detective Robert Butler said.  “We haven’t had anything major this year (on campus) except a pound of marijuana.”
     Marijuana is the most common drug found by GCSU police, but reports of more serious drugs are not unheard of in Milledgeville.
     T.J. Berglund, a GCSU senior who lives near where Harden was apprehended, said he feels drugs are common thing on campus.
     “I wouldn’t be too surprised to see it, I mean, drugs are everywhere,” Berglund said.
    GCSU seniors Chip Edwards and Eric Casper agree.
     “I think (cocaine use) goes on more than people realize,” Edwards said.
     However, the results of  the Core Alcohol and Drug Survey, developed to measure drug usages, attitudes and perceptions among college students at two year and four-year institutions, when taken last year, indicates otherwise.  
     Of the sample of GCSU 516 students taken, 22.9 percent had used marijuana in the past year.  In the past 30 days, 1.4 percent of students reported usage of cocaine and other more dangerous drugs.
     “I don’t think there’s a ton of heavy users on campus,” Edwards said.  “There’s definitely got to be more marijuana than anything else (not including alcohol).”
     Opinions aside, according to Rachel Sullivan, University Health Educator, there is a new drug trend slowly emerging at GCSU,  Robo-tripping.
     Also known as cough medicine abuse, “robo-tripping” is taking extremely large amounts of cough medicine to get high. Taking a large amount of dextromethorphan, often abbreviated as DXM (an active ingredient found in many cough medicines) causes the “high.” This sort of abuse, whether it’s called cough medicine abuse, or dextromethorphan, or DXM abuse — is dangerous.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Nov 1 2007. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry