Shocked at uni drug culture

Exactly this. The more affluent the kids, the more drugs very often. I think that culture is a surprise if you’re not used to it but once she’s in with her own friends and away from halls it will be less in her face.

Is she in university halls? If she is, there will likely be very strict rules about drug use in halls. She could quietly raise the issue with accommodation or wellbeing ad ask for advice.

The other students will have signed behaviour contracts, and in my experience the uni should be pretty rigorous in sorting it out.

Also I assume buying drugs harder than weed (ket, mdma, cocaine etc) indirectly fuels violent crime?

One of the reasons my DC only lived out for one year and commuted the rest.

Yeah me too. None of my social circle were like this. It’s definitely worse nowadays, and I think it’s amazing how people are happy to ignore all the harm it causes.

Honestly I don't think there is going to be anything she can do about the drugs unless she wants to report her flatmates, which will probably cause more aggro that it's worth and I doubt the outcome would be what she's hoping for.

I don't think there's any harm in her focussing on asking her flatmates to be more considerate re late nights and noise. And at least she's sorted for something else next year.

FWIW my DD is a third year at UoBristol which as PPs have said is known for the drugs culture. Ket is about as common as a glass of a chicken wine. DD has lost friends and missed out on a flat share because she's very anti, but still has plenty of friends and a decent social life, so things will settle down for your DD.

I always recommend prospective students to look at the social lives at the particular unis.
I went to a uni in a very much pub culture city. It was great for me. We would go out a couple of times a week for "last orders" once every couple of weeks for an evening. Home and in bed by midnight before my carriage turned into a pumpkin again.

I knew quite a few people who were definitely more into the club and drugs culture and they would go to near by cities every week for the clubs their getting the first train of the day home at 4am.

I'd say she just needs to find the people like her. The first term is always hard and you are just randomly dumped with a bunch of people and not necessarily people who have the same interests and values.

I’ve never taken a drug either. Never even a puff of weed. I was always too scared to. I worked in the music industry from the age of 16, coke was pudding, but I never tried a thing.

I prefered alcohol as I had control over it.

I think drugs are taken by all groups and individuals. The ‘drug trade’ is booming and there are lots of customers from teens through to people in their twenties, thirties snd beyond!

Some kids won’t touch them. Dd is very anti drugs. Doesn’t even drink. The police came and gave a six week course of anti drug/drinking talk when she was at primary school and it terrified her.

And now she’s on blood thinners for life I think she’s even less likely to take illegal drugs.

It's often worse at the more competitive uni's. More pressure + wealthier student population (on average). Plus, young people off the leash and making the most of not being under their parent's eye. Going a bit wild. The first year is often a bit chaotic in that respect. An imbalance of socialising, drinking and experimenting vs work. It generally settles once the novelty of living more independently wears off. YANBU to be worried, it's normal as a parent but it is a pretty bog standard part of the uni experience for most young people.

I was at a Russell group in the 90s. I knew obe guy who'd have a spliff from time to time. No-one I knew touched anything harder at all.

I didn’t go to uni. But everyone else I knew did.

It was the mid 90s and wall to wall extacy.

RG is irrelevant. Bristol has one of the worst reps especially in certain halls that you wouldn’t ’expect’ it to be in, but it is.

Edit to add: sorry, I shouldn’t put that forward without proper statistics, I’m just going by what my uni dds hear. It’s not proven.

Yeah. Sure.

I did teach that drugs are a big no no. DS admitted to me that he was tempted once. He was feeling a lot of FOMO but resisted the temptation. I did make him promise not to do drugs. And he hasn't because he's too scared of becoming a drug death.

That was my other point. I had a lot of “South Asian” friends who were “raised correctly” who when away from community eyes did their fair share of hellraising.

I am sure their parents are nonethewiser.

She should move if she's not happy there - and I wouldn't be either. Always select "quiet" on the accommodation options. If she finds the current housemates too bad and really doesn't like it then she could always ask for a move and say they're a bit noisy (doesn't need to mention drugs etc).

Absolutely. I was raised in a strictly Catholic household by teetotal parents. I’ve still done my share of hellraising. My parents, obviously, had no idea because they weren’t there. I also got a double first.

No it's not remotely reasonable to consider 'reporting' it.

Other people's lives and how they socialise are their business. These people are complete strangers to you. And they are adults.

It's a shame your daughter thinks her flatmates party too much. But you sound like you've lost all sense of reason on the subject. What you described is totally normal for young people. Not just uni students.

I love how naive MN is 🤣

When I was at university, it was the kids from the stereotypical MN nice middle class families who did the most drugs and partied the hardest. Always the ones doing the sensible degrees like law.

Mummy and daddy dearest would visit after the holidays to drop them off food, etc and it would be so funny if I was around or bumped into them seeing their two completely different lives. At home, they’re a prim and proper choir boy but at university they’re a top shagger, well known for taking and dealing every drug known to man.

Mummy would definitely be on MN when she got home: “my little darling is staunchly against alcohol and drugs, we’ve just visited him and he has such lovely, well mannered friends” - yeah, you should pop back in a couple of hours love, see what he’s really like!

They really weren’t. I was at an RG uni in the 90s and drug taking was a pretty fringe activity amongst my immediate and wider friendship groups. A very small number of people would take the odd E. or a bit of speed, but is was definitely the exception not the rule. We all drank hideous amounts of cheap booze, mind.

I went to university in the 90s and I have never taken one drug or smoked one cigarette. I didn’t drink either. I still had lots of friends and went out. It’s not impossible!

I have one at Bristol. She drinks a bit but doesn’t smoke or take drugs. She says some people take drugs but it really hasn’t affected her. In her group a couple smoke cannabis but that’s it. She still goes out a lot and is involved in various societies. But she certainly hasn’t felt it was ubiquitous.

In her halls of 40 there were only a handful taking anything significant. I think it might just be the luck of the draw. I would have her move accommodation if she is struggling.

I went to Bath in the 00s and drugs were everywhere.

So ywbu to say it's a new thing.

But yanbu to say that it is quite shocking tbh, especially as now people are paying £9k a year for the privilege of going to university, supposedly to get an education.

Drug users, even recreational ones, don't do their best work in the days after a big night. I'd not be happy with my kids if they took themselves off to uni and just did a tonne of drugs instead of working.

in the olden days it wasn't such a big deal, but the economy and job market is different now. Young people do not have the luxury of taking a few years off to do very little work and party a lot.