<p>The recent news about Jon Bon Jovi's daughter at Hamilton, including overdose and arrest on heroin possession charges as well as some of her friends raises a question in my mind. Are drugs, including heroin, prevalent on the school's campus or is this an anomaly? Asking as the friend of some parents whose kids attend as well as others interested in attending.</p>
<p>My son is a freshman at Hamilton, and we asked him the same question. Lots of beer drinking, some pot, very little hard drugs. He believes that her situation is the exception.</p>
<p>I am hoping that hard drugs like heroin at quite the exception most places. I am sure if you go looking for cocaine or heroin at many campuses, eventually you can find a source. But I cant imagine there are many places where it is in the open and readily available. Alcohol is probably more of a worry for parents.</p>
<p>I doubt that it’s prevalent but opiate addiction/use is not as rare among the college crowd as you’d like to believe. And I think that once they no longer have access to a parent’s prescription pain meds, heroin becomes the next thing. This article [Prescription</a> Drugs on Campus – OxyContin and Vicodin Lead Huge Surge :: Stop Oxy](<a href=“http://www.stopoxy.com/prescription-drugs-campus-oxy-adderall-vicodin-oxycontin]Prescription”>Prescription Drugs on Campus - Oxy and Adderall Are Being Abused - Stop Oxy) mentions a survey that claims more students are abusing prescription pain meds (opiates) than are abusing stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin.</p>
<p>I can stipulate that it’s rare, because unlike grass, heroin is physically addicting and pretty hard to cover up. When I went to Wesleyan in the 70’s, there was one guy who was using heroin, and he dropped out and never came back. Hamilton has a 94% or so return rate for freshmen to sophomore year and a very high graduation rate. You simply cannot perform at a high level (excuse the pun) if you’re hooked on horse. Hamilton is pretty rigorous and is a great community. We can only hope that this poor young woman had gotten ahold of heroin and was discovered before she started to use it. Parents, chill, your kids know the difference between hard drugs and marijuana, and the administreation and public safety departments are generally on top of these things before it becomes anything even close to widespread.</p>
<p>Heroine is definitely NOT an issue at Hamilton, haha, this was an extremely rare incident.</p>
<p>If anything, students smoke marijuana and drink a lot of alcohol, which is true for any competitive LAC in this day of age, honestly. There are, of course, individuals that comprise every college, and some of these individuals choose to do hard drugs, but that doesn’t mean that if you or if your child goes to that college, they will be consistently running into hard drugs.</p>