(-- The Beacon)
By Alistair Rokstad
You probably didn't take the time to peruse all 32 glorious pages of the Department of Public Safety's Crime and Fire Report – and neither did I. The publication, a.k.a. University of Portland's Annual Security Report, contains statistics of reported crimes that have occurred over the past three years within the university's sphere of influence as well as a variety of institutional policies and other information. The report is made available annually to the university community in accordance with the Campus Crime Reporting Act and the amended Higher Education Opportunity Act.
I suppose it is a just and noble thing to be transparent with the truth, but if the information provided is inaccurate, how can we trust the source?
I am referring to the "Health Risks" subsection of the Drug and Alcohol Policy portion of the report. The heading states that the list contains "type of drug, other names and possible health risks." This is not the case. The formatting is inconsistent and the list fluctuates wildly in scope, listing general categories of drugs as well as specific ones and in logical order. In some cases the effects of the drug are stated, but sometimes only the worst possible health risks are mentioned.
The lazy compilation is relatively trivial when compared to the egregious errors that run rampant within it. Let me take a moment to point out a few the most erroneous listings. Here is one – Mescaline: (MDA, DMT, STP, Psilocybin, designer drugs) Same as above. The parenthetical is supposed to indicate "other names" but here it lists four completely different drugs and then a class of drugs, all of which are not mescaline. Not even close.
Mescaline is a psychedelic alkaloid that occurs naturally in many plants, most notably the Peyote cactus. MDA is a synthetic empathogen that is closely related to MDMA, the primary ingredient in ecstasy (ecstasy is notoriously impure, but pill testing results are available at ecstasydata.org, if you're curious to know the ingredients list). DMT is a psychedelic tryptamine that is found in plants, as well as the brains of animals and humans (read: dreams and near death experiences). Psilocybin is the psychedelic tryptamine responsible for the effects of psychedelic or "magic" mushrooms. "Designer drugs" is a term used for derivatives of existing drugs that are designed to skirt drug laws by nature of their modified the chemical structure.
I have only picked apart one of the entries among a list riddled with errors – I simply don't have the space or the time to do the whole thing – but I feel this proves my point.
I assume this section of the report is supposed to be a resource, but it only engenders confusion and fear with it's limited, inconsistent and simply un-true information.
Alistair Rokstad is a senior engineering management major. He can be contacted at rokstad12@up.edu.
