Beyond punishment: the impacts of medical amnesty in a U.S. Residential college context

AbstractDespite its risks, heavy drinking is widespread at universities. Increasingly, colleges are integrating harm-reduction perspectives into traditional punishment/deterrence-based alcohol policy approaches. One such programme is the Medical Amnesty/Good Samaritan (MAGS) policy, which reduces or eliminates punishing consequences for students seeking alcohol-related emergency assistance. But beyond its specific utility of potentially saving lives, there is almost no empirical work to examine how MAGS might affect a college climate. To explore this important issue, we compared a cohort of n = 1006 pre-MAGS students to a cohort of n = 537 post-MAGS students (from the same institution), and also sub-samples of n = 448 pre-MAGS versus n = 195 post-MAGS freshmen. Findings showed fewer adverse events among post-MAGS freshmen. Furthermore, the full cohort of post-MAGS students appeared to have more positive perceptions of campus climate. Other results were mixed, inviting discussion. Nevertheless, the present...