How student drug-taking reached new highs (and lows) in lockdown
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 4 June 2021
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For much of the pandemic, university students have been confined to their halls for months on end. For some, drugs became a way to pass the time. But as lockdown lifts, will the rise in student drug taking have a more lasting impact?
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Guests:
-Megan Agnew, The Sunday Times Magazine commissioning editor.
-Claire, student.
Host: Manveen Rana.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Imagine you, you in a nice comfy seat with your hands behind your head, taking in the views, |
| 0:09.6 | instead of taking on the road, maybe even taking a nap. That's the bliss of getting where you |
| 0:15.5 | need to go without worrying about driving. Book your train journey via avantiwascoast.co.uk |
| 0:23.0 | and we'll take you there. Avantiwascoast, feel good travel. |
| 0:30.1 | This last long lockdown was a struggle for everyone, bringing isolation and loneliness to many. |
| 0:46.3 | But imagine what it would be like if you're a student living away from home, possibly for the very |
| 0:52.8 | first time. There's no students union open, there's no halls bar open, there are no communal |
| 0:59.6 | areas open, there really was nowhere to go other than their bedrooms. Unable to make the most of |
| 1:06.1 | their newfound freedom, with no face-to-face teaching and no social interaction to help them make |
| 1:12.1 | friends, they've been confined to halls for months at a time. I mean I have a close friend who |
| 1:19.2 | had never touched drugs before coming to university and is now kind of picking up on a weekly or |
| 1:26.4 | every other weekly basis. For many, drugs became a way to pass the time. But as lockdown lifts, |
| 1:39.6 | will this rise in student drug taking have a more lasting impact. You're listening to stories |
| 1:45.5 | of our times from the times in the Sunday times. I'm Manvin Rana. Today, why drugs on campus |
| 1:52.7 | have reached an all-time high. A number of recent studies have shown that drug use amongst young people |
| 2:01.7 | is increasing. That trend is reflected on campuses all over the country. For students, it's been a tough |
| 2:10.2 | year. Many will tell you. It was definitely not what I had expected of my university experience. |
| 2:18.3 | That's a student who we're calling Claire. She's just finished her first year at the University of |
| 2:23.5 | Bristol. I think when I went in September, I think I had thought that things would open up by second |
| 2:30.0 | term. So then obviously when I started to realise it wasn't, it was a massive kind of adapting |
| 2:36.0 | to realising that probably my whole little first year was going to be pretty much all in lockdown. |
| 2:42.8 | And it was never going to have my freshers week and I was never going to go to a club. I was never |
... |
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