Penn State bust put focus on cocaine but on most campuses the big risk is alcohol

When Pennsylvania Attorney General David Sunday laid out details about an alleged drug ring that funneled kilos of cocaine to students at Penn State University, the case raised specters of the 1980s when coke was a popular party drug among young Americans.

"Cocaine was often packaged at the fraternity houses and the packaging was done by fraternity brothers and oftentimes pledges," Sunday said at a press conference August 17 , where he confirmed 14 people had been arrested.

"The actual drug dealing was largely from friend to friend … and at fraternity houses and during parties," he added, describing a large-scale criminal enterprise that operated in 2023 and 2024.

The alleged campus cocaine scheme has drawn national headlines and the investigation is continuing. But while the case is serious, because any amount of cocaine use poses serious health risks, NPR could find no evidence cocaine use is gaining popularity on campuses. Research points to the opposite.

"There's been a decrease over the past five years of cocaine use among young adults in the U.S.," said Megan Patrick, a researcher at the University of Michigan, who co-authors an annual survey of substance use in the U.S . "The prevalence is about 5% in the past 12 months [of young adults who] used cocaine."

Patrick noted that other substances are far more popular than cocaine and potentially disruptive on college campuses. "High levels of cannabis use" are widespread and "alcohol use is still the most prevalent substance," she said.

National substance use data typically isn't collected specifically for college students or for people in the U.S. between the ages of 18 and 22, so researchers said patterns of drug use on campuses have to be extrapolated from a variety of studies and surveys.

One comprehensive report released last month by the federal Substance Use and Mental Health Services Administration found cocaine use among young adults, age 18 to 25, fell from 3.7% in 2021 to 2.6% last year. That data includes non-college students.