In summary
College students who seek help for substance use after an overdose face disciplinary action by their campus. A new California law, written in part by students themselves, will require colleges and universities to offer rehabilitation services to students rather than discipline.
California college students have two choices when they are experiencing an overdose: Ask for help and risk punishment from their university, or stay quiet and leave it up to fate.
Two years ago, TJ McGee, a second-year student at UC Berkeley, faced this very question. On the night that he overdosed, he lay on the floor of his dorm, pale and seizing.
His roommates — hovering above his body — were scared and frantic. They hesitated to call for help.
“In that moment, when someone is overdosing, the stakes are life and death. But for the person on the ground, there is no guarantee that help will mean healing,” McGee told California Assembly members in a committee hearing in April 2025.
Now, starting in July, students who experience an overdose will have more protections and resources. Signed into law in October, Assembly Bill 602 requires all campuses in California’s three public higher education systems – California Community Colleges, California State University and University of California – to offer students the opportunity to receive rehabilitation services for drug and alcohol use 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 Assemblymember Matt Haney, a Democrat from San Francisco. Their hope is that students will not hesitate to reach out for help when they experience an overdose.
After his 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 in a Senate committee hearing to imagine what it was like the night he overdosed.
“No one asked if he was OK. No one pointed him towards support… he spent the next months crawling his way through recovery alone, piecing together what he could, holding his education together with duct tape and desperation,” he said during the hearing as he recounted his story in the third person.
According to UC Berkeley’s Student Conduct Policy, students can be disciplined for using or ingesting alcohol and controlled substances on campus. If a student violates the university policies more than once, they can be temporarily or permanently removed from campus, including from student housing.
UC Berkeley officials confirmed that the university sent an email informing students that it will comply with AB 602 but did not provide additional comments to clarify how it will impact the campus student conduct policy.
UC Berkeley does operate a Collegiate Recovery Program that students can access voluntarily. Staff members from the program sometimes reach out to students when they have been notified about an overdose on campus.
As of February, the third leading cause of death for 18- to 24-year-olds in the state are drug overdoses, according to data from the California Department of Public Health.
In 2025, some of the most common substances college students used included alcohol and hallucinogens, according to survey results from the American College Health Association. Around 4% of students reported using cocaine at least once and 8% reported using hallucinogens, according to the same data.
The same survey also showed that 2.3% of students reported they were in recovery from alcohol or substance use.
Saanvi Arora, one of the students involved in drafting the bill, said many students do not trust university staff members enough to reach out for help. She is a fourth-year computer science and legal studies student at UC Berkeley, where she and other students on campus have heard stories of peers who’ve experienced an overdose but hesitated to ask for help.
“They would much rather just see what happens and hope that they’re OK. Leave it up to fate honestly, than call or go downstairs and bring an RA or bring a trusted campus official to help them,” she said.
Drug addiction and substance use is a personal issue for Arora. One of her close friends died from an overdose when Arora was 15.
Aditi Hariharan, another student who helped draft the bill in her role as the 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 experienced alcohol addiction during their first year in college. She said they were unable to access recovery services on their campus and eventually dropped out of UC Davis to find other resources.
“In that process, I learned a lot about supporting someone close to me in their recovery journey, [and] I learned a lot about how recovery was 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 start building an addiction recovery program. She later served on some of the hiring committees when the position was being filled.
Today, the UC Davis Collegiate Recovery Program supports students on campus who are seeking resources to recover 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 engage in recovery if you’re already dead,” Hariharan said. “This legislation allows folks to seek medical care.”
Haney, a representative for District 17 in San Francisco, said he agreed to help the students draft the bill after they reached out to his office.
“We should protect students from these hugely harmful academic consequences when they do the right thing and call for help,” Haney said.
Haney, who graduated from UC Berkeley in 2005, said the issue of drug use is a high priority for him because the area of San Francisco he represents has a high number of drug-related deaths. In 2024, San Francisco County had the fifth-highest number of deaths caused by opioid-related overdoses in the state, according to data from the California Department of Public Health. That same dataset shows the majority of those deaths happened in the northeast part of the county, including the Tenderloin District, with 3 out of every 100 residents in the area dying from opioid overdose.
After researching several universities, Haney said he and the students discovered that campus policies related to substance use were inconsistent and dangerous.
“They would clearly deter students from asking for help when they most needed it, and that could put their lives in danger,” he said. “So there was an obvious need for a state policy to create a more uniform approach.”
Previous drafts of the bill included additional protections for students who call for help when another person is experiencing an overdose. They also lacked a limit on the frequency in which students could avoid disciplinary action by opting for rehabilitation services.
These sections were revised after UC and Cal State officials expressed concerns that the original text could create a standard where students could be fully recused 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 experience an overdose to only once per academic term.
During the hearings, the UC and Cal State systems did not state their official positions on the bill. However, Ray Murillo, the interim assistant vice chancellor for student affairs for the Cal State system, said he worries the original version of the bill could have been interpreted to give students full exemptions.
“Our biggest concern is that it [shouldn’t give] 100% amnesty, meaning just the fact that alcohol or other substance use was involved, that the student gets 100% amnesty,” Murillo said. “We weren’t comfortable with completely recusing the student.”
Murillo said Cal State has not yet developed a specific program to implement AB 602 on a systemwide scale, but many of its campuses have their own resources. For example, many campuses educate students about drug safety. Some campuses also offer specialized counseling for 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 the Campus Opioid Safety Act in 2023, requiring all Cal State and community colleges, and requesting UCs, to have Narcan available to students on each campus.
Murillo said Cal State still needs to determine how much it will cost to create new programs and resources, and whether some of these expenses will have to be covered by the students who use these services.
“We don’t have a program that’s directly tied to this bill just yet. When it comes to rehabilitation services, that is certainly one of the big questions that we’re still assessing,” Murillo said.
Alina Ta is a contributor with 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.
