California colleges to offer rehabilitation instead of discipline for overdose

from Alina TaCalMatters

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

California college students have two choices when they overdose: ask for help and risk being punished by their university, or keep quiet and let things go.

Two years ago, TJ McGee, a sophomore at the University of California, Berkeley, faced this very question. The night he overdoses, he lies on the floor of his dorm, pale and passed out.

His roommates – hovering over his body – were frightened and distraught. They hesitated to call for help.

“At that point, when someone overdoses, it’s life and death. But for the person on the ground, there’s no guarantee that help will mean healing,” McGee told members of the California Assembly in committee hearing in April 2025

Now, starting in July, students who overdose will have more protections and resources. Signed into law in October, Assembly Bill 602 requires all campuses in California’s three public systems of higher education—California Community Colleges, California State University, and UCLA—to offer students the opportunity to receive drug and alcohol rehabilitation services before taking disciplinary action against them.

The bill was drafted by a group of students from UC Berkeley, UC Davis and other universities with the help of Assemblyman Matt HaneyDemocrat from San Francisco. Their hope is that students won’t hesitate to seek help when they overdose.

After the overdose, McGee said the university placed him on academic probation. In July, McGee testified again in support of the bill, this time asking state representatives at a Senate committee hearing to imagine what it was like the night he overdosed.

“No one asked him if he was OK. No one directed him to support … he spent the next months crawling his way through recovery on his own, piecing together what he could, holding his education together with duct tape and despair,” he said during the meeting while telling his story in the third person.

According to UC Berkeley Student Conduct Policystudents may be disciplined for the use or ingestion of alcohol and controlled substances on campus. If a student violates university rules more than once, they may be temporarily or permanently removed from campus, including student housing.

UC Berkeley officials confirmed that the university sent an email informing students that it would comply with AB 602, but did not provide further comment to clarify how it would affect the student conduct policy on campus.

UC Berkeley works with a Collegiate Recovery Program which students have access to voluntarily. Staff members from the program sometimes reach out to students when they have been notified of an overdose on campus.

As of February, the third leading cause of death for 18- to 24-year-olds in the state was drug overdose, according to data from the California Department of Public Health.

In 2025, some of the most commonly used substances by college students include alcohol and hallucinogens, according to the survey results from the American College Health Association. About 4 percent of students reported using cocaine at least once, and 8 percent reported using hallucinogens, according to the same data.

The same survey also found that 2.3% of students reported recovering from alcohol or substance use.

Saanvi Arora, one of the students involved in drafting the bill, said many students do not trust university officials enough to reach out for help. She is a fourth-year computer science and law student at UC Berkeley, where she and other students on campus have heard stories of peers who have overdosed but hesitated to seek help.

“They’d rather just see what’s going on and hope they’re OK. Leave it to their own devices honestly than to call or go down and get an RA or bring in a trusted campus staff member to help them,” she said.

Drug addiction and substance use is a personal problem for Arora. One of her close friends died of an overdose when Arora was 15 years old.

Aditi Hariharan, another student who helped draft the bill in her role as president of the UC Student Association, said she has several friends who have struggled with addiction and recovery.

Hariharan, a student studying political science and nutrition at UC Davis, said a close friend of hers from high school had an alcohol addiction during their freshman year of college. She said they were unable to access recovery services on their campus and eventually left UC Davis to find other resources.

“In that process, I learned a lot about supporting someone close to me in their recovery, (and) I learned a lot about how recovery is super non-linear and non-standardized,” Hariharan said.

In 2023, Hariharan and other students on campus advocated for UC Davis to hire a coordinator to begin building an addiction recovery program. She later served on some of the hiring committees when the position was filled.

Today, on UC Davis Collegiate Recovery Program supports students on campus seeking resources for recovery from substance use or other addictive behaviors. UC Davis is one of six UC campuses, including UC Berkeley, with collegiate recovery programs.

“You can’t do recovery if you’re already dead,” Hariharan said. “This legislation allows people to seek medical care.”

Haney, the District 17 representative in San Francisco, said he agreed to help the students draft the bill after they contacted his office.

“We need to protect students from these extremely harmful academic consequences when they do the right thing and seek help,” Haney said.

Haney, who graduated from UC Berkeley in 2005, said the drug problem is a high priority for him because the San Francisco area he represents has a high number of drug-related deaths. In 2024, San Francisco County had the fifth highest number of opioid-related overdose deaths, according to data from the California Department of Public Health. the same data set shows that the majority of those deaths occurred in the northeast part of the county, including the Tenderloin area, with 3 in every 100 residents in the area dying of opiate overdoses.

After researching several universities, Haney said he and students found that campus policies related to substance use were inconsistent and unsafe.

“They would obviously deter students from seeking help when they need it most, and that could put their lives at risk,” he said. “So there was an obvious need for state policy to create a more unified approach.”

Previous drafts of the bill included additional protections for students who call for help when another person has overdosed. They also have no limit on the frequency in which students can avoid disciplinary action by opting for rehabilitative services.

Those sections were revised after UC and Cal State officials expressed concern that the original text could create a standard where students could be completely suspended from academic discipline, including if they violate other student conduct policies, such as assaulting another person or damaging school property. The final draft of the bill does not include protections for witnesses who call for help and limits protections for students who have overdosed to only once per term.

During the hearings, the UC and Cal State systems did not express their official positions on the bill. However, Ray Murillo, interim assistant vice chancellor for student affairs for the Cal State system, said he worries that the original version of the bill could be interpreted to give students blanket exemptions.

“Our biggest concern is that (it shouldn’t give) 100 percent amnesty, which means just the fact that alcohol or other substance use was involved that the student gets 100 percent amnesty,” Murillo said. “We didn’t feel comfortable with completely rejecting the student.”

Murillo said Cal State has not yet developed a specific system-wide implementation program for AB 602, but many of its campuses have their own resources. For example many campuses educate students on the safety of medicines. Some campuses also offer specialized consulting on substance use and addiction or already require students to participate in a rehabilitation program if they are caught using drugs or alcohol on campus.
Gov. Gavin Newsom also signed on The Opioid Safety on Campus Act in 2023, requiring all California state and community colleges and aspiring UCs to have Narcan available to students on every campus.

Murillo said Cal State still has to determine how much it will cost to create new programs and resources and whether some of those costs will have to be covered by the students who use those services.

“We don’t have a program yet that is directly related to this bill. When it comes to rehabilitation services, that’s certainly one of the big issues that we’re still evaluating,” Murillo said.

Alina Ta is a fellow at the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters Higher Education Coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.