A survey implemented in April found that alcohol is the most predominant drug used on campus with marijuana coming in a distant second.

Michael Haines, health enhancement services coordinator, said of the 500 students surveyed, 60 percent said they had five or more drinks in a row in the past two weeks.

Twenty-nine percent of students reported drinking five or more drinks once in a two-week period; 22 percent reported twice; 40 percent reported three times; seven percent reported six to nine times; and two percent reported 10 or more times, the survey stated.

The National Institute of Drug Abuse sets the cut-off between moderate and heavy drinking at five or more drinks in a row, Haines said.

NIU is above the national average of 45 percent for consuming heavy drinking, he said.

Haines said, “A problem user drinks frequently or in quantity.” Those students who consume five or more drinks three to five times in a two-week period draw concern.

Heavy drinking brings about problems with the judicial office, fights, illness and accidents, Haines said. The health services would like to change heavy drinking habits without eliminating drinking altogether to help students be healthier, he said.

The results of determining which drug is most dominant on campus can help the health services devise an educational program for alcohol, Haines said.

For example, if a program was implemented to conquer students’ problem with heroin and students do not have a heroin problem, the health services would have wasted valuable time and money, he said.

He said a program should be implemented next fall.

The survey was conducted through a two-year federal grant and designed to decrease substance abuse on campus, he said.

The grant also proposes students learn other students’ drinking habits, Haines said. He said underclassmen have misconceptions of how much upperclassmen drink. Some upperclassmen drink “maturely—they enjoy drinking without drunkenness. Excessive drinking is one of the most common signs of immature drinking,” he said.

In addition, students answered questions on the use of certain drugs including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and LSD, Haines said. Marijuana was found to be the predominant drug used on campus excluding alcohol, he said.

Haines said 14 percent of the students surveyed smoked less than one joint in one month and 5 percent smoked one or more a day.

He said a student who smokes one or more joints per day is a heavy marijuana user. Several problems associated with marijuana smoking are “greater incidents of upper respiratory disease,” and “people become lethargic.”

“Nationwide, there has been a decline in drug use,” Haines said. More people are making decisons to quit drugs because of “concerns about physiological and psychological harm,” he said.

In the last 10 years, a trend toward conservatism has been increasing, with alcohol being “the drug of choice,” Haines said.