California Colleges Must Offer Rehab Before Discipline Under New Student-Drafted Law

TJ McGee lay on his dorm floor at UC Berkeley, pale and seizing, while his roommates stood frozen above him. They wanted to call for help. They were terrified not to. But in that moment, the calculation was stark: saving McGee's life might cost him his education.

"In that moment, when someone is overdosing, the stakes are life and death," McGee told California Assembly members during testimony last spring. "But for the person on the ground, there is no guarantee that help will mean healing."

McGee's roommates did call for help. He survived. Then UC Berkeley placed him on academic probation.

Starting in July, that equation changes. Assembly Bill 602, signed into law last October and effective this summer, requires all California State University and University of California campuses to offer students rehabilitation services before taking disciplinary action when they experience an overdose. The law was written in large part by students like McGee—young people who watched peers make impossible choices and decided the system needed to change.

When Policy Becomes Personal

The legislation grew out of a recognition among UC students that campus drug policies, ostensibly designed to keep students safe, were doing the opposite. Under existing conduct codes at schools like UC Berkeley, students caught using alcohol or controlled substances on campus face sanctions that escalate with each violation—from warnings to temporary removal to permanent expulsion from housing or the university entirely.

Those penalties created what Saanvi Arora, a fourth-year computer science and legal studies student at UC Berkeley who helped draft the bill, describes as a perverse incentive structure. Students experiencing overdoses knew that seeking help could trigger investigations into their substance use, putting their academic standing at risk. Many, she said, 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."

The stakes are not hypothetical. As of February 2026, drug overdoses are the third leading cause of death for 18- to 24-year-olds in California, according to the state Department of Public Health. A 2025 survey by the American College Health Association found that while 4% of college students reported using cocaine at least once and 8% used hallucinogens, only 2.3% said they were actively in recovery—suggesting many students with substance use issues go without treatment.

Arora's involvement in the legislation was driven by loss. A close friend died from an overdose when Arora was fifteen. "They would much rather just see what happens and hope that they're OK," she said of students facing overdoses now. "Leave it up to fate."

Aditi Hariharan, president of the UC Student Association and a political science and nutrition student at UC Davis, became an advocate after watching a high school friend struggle with alcohol addiction during their first year at UC Davis. The friend couldn't access recovery services on campus and eventually dropped out to seek help elsewhere.

"In that process, I learned a lot about supporting someone close to me in their recovery journey," Hariharan said. "I learned a lot about how recovery was super non-linear and non-standardized."

In 2023, Hariharan and other UC Davis students successfully lobbied the university to hire a coordinator and establish a Collegiate Recovery Program, which now supports students seeking resources for substance use or addictive behaviors. UC Davis is one of six UC campuses with such programs; UC Berkeley operates a similar initiative. But these voluntary programs, the students realized, couldn't reach people who feared coming forward.

From Testimony to Law

The students approached Assemblymember Matt Haney, a Democrat representing San Francisco's District 17, after researching campus policies across California's public university systems. What they found, Haney said, was a patchwork of inconsistent and sometimes dangerous rules.

"They would clearly deter students from asking for help when they most needed it, and that could put their lives in danger," Haney said. "So there was an obvious need for a state policy to create a more uniform approach."

Haney, a 2005 UC Berkeley graduate, represents neighborhoods in San Francisco with some of the state's highest opioid overdose death rates. In 2024, San Francisco County recorded the fifth-highest number of opioid-related deaths statewide, according to the California Department of Public Health. The Tenderloin District alone saw 3 out of every 100 residents die from opioid overdose that year. For Haney, the students' proposal aligned with a broader imperative: systems should protect people who seek help, not punish them.

The bill went through multiple revisions. Early drafts included protections for students who called for help when another person overdosed—a Good Samaritan provision common in other overdose-related legislation. They also lacked limits on how many times a student could access rehabilitation services instead of facing discipline.

UC and Cal State administrators raised concerns that the original language could be interpreted to exempt students from all academic consequences, even when substance use occurred alongside other violations like assault or property damage. In response, the final version of AB 602 narrowed protections to students who personally experience an overdose, excluded Good Samaritan provisions, and capped access to rehabilitation-first options at once per academic term.

Ray Murillo, interim assistant vice chancellor for student affairs for the Cal State system, testified that his primary concern was avoiding blanket amnesty. "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," he said. "We weren't comfortable with completely recusing the student."

During the legislative hearings, neither the UC nor Cal State systems took official positions on the bill. Both ultimately committed to compliance. UC Berkeley sent an email to students confirming it would implement AB 602 but did not detail how the law would alter existing conduct policies.

Implementation Questions Remain

AB 602 requires campuses to offer rehabilitation services before disciplinary action, but it does not define what those services must include, how long they must last, or who will pay for them. Cal State's Murillo said the system has not yet developed a program to implement AB 602 on a systemwide scale, though many campuses already offer substance use education, specialized counseling, or mandated rehabilitation for students caught using drugs or alcohol.

"We don't have a program that's directly tied to this bill just yet," Murillo said during testimony. "When it comes to rehabilitation services, that is certainly one of the big questions that we're still assessing."

One critical uncertainty is cost. Murillo noted that Cal State is evaluating whether some rehabilitation expenses will need to be covered by the students who use the services—a model that could create its own access barriers if students fear financial penalties alongside academic ones.

The law also does not address what happens if a student declines the offered rehabilitation services or fails to complete them. Campus conduct policies retain discretion to impose discipline after the rehabilitation opportunity has been provided, meaning the law shifts the sequence of interventions but does not eliminate the possibility of sanctions.

For the students who drafted the bill, these ambiguities are frustrating but not disqualifying. Arora said many students on campus don't trust university staff enough to seek help under any circumstances, and AB 602 at least creates a legal mandate that rehabilitation comes first.

"You can't engage in recovery if you're already dead," Hariharan said. "This legislation allows folks to seek medical care."

Broader Context: Campus Overdose Response

AB 602 builds on earlier California legislation aimed at reducing overdose deaths on college campuses. In 2023, Governor Gavin Newsom signed the Campus Opioid Safety Act, which requires all Cal State and community colleges—and requests that UCs—stock naloxone (commonly known by the brand name Narcan) on campus. Naloxone reverses opioid overdoses when administered promptly and has become a cornerstone of harm reduction efforts nationwide.

That law addressed the immediate medical response to overdoses. AB 602 addresses what happens next: the moment when a student who has just survived an overdose must decide whether to engage with campus systems that could either support their recovery or derail their education.

McGee, reflecting on the night he overdosed, described returning to campus after his medical crisis with no pathway toward treatment. "No one asked if he was OK. No one pointed him towards support," he testified, recounting his experience in the third person. "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."

Under AB 602, students like McGee will have a different experience—or at least, they're supposed to. Whether California's public universities build robust, accessible, non-punitive rehabilitation pathways or treat the law as a bureaucratic checkbox will determine if the legislation fulfills the vision of the students who fought for it.

National Implications

California is not the first state to recognize that punitive campus drug policies can deter students from seeking help, but AB 602 represents one of the most comprehensive legislative efforts to mandate a treatment-first approach at the state level. If the law succeeds in reducing overdose deaths and increasing access to recovery services, other states with large public university systems may follow.

The fact that students themselves drove the legislation also signals a generational shift in how substance use is understood and addressed. The young people who drafted AB 602 grew up in the shadow of the opioid crisis, surrounded by peers who use drugs and friends who have died. They do not see substance use as a moral failure or a disciplinary problem. They see it as a public health crisis that requires medical intervention, not academic probation.

Haney, who worked with the students to shepherd the bill through the legislature, said their leadership was essential. "We should protect students from these hugely harmful academic consequences when they do the right thing and call for help," he said.

Whether AB 602 becomes a model for other states or a cautionary tale about implementation gaps will depend on decisions made in the coming months by campus administrators, health services staff, and the students who will need to trust that asking for help won't destroy their futures. For now, the law represents a hard-won acknowledgment that when someone is lying on a dorm room floor, pale and seizing, the people standing over them should never have to calculate whether calling for help is worth the risk.

McGee, who spent months rebuilding his life after his overdose and academic probation, returned to the California Senate last summer to testify one more time. His message was simple: students deserve better than duct tape and desperation. As of July, California law will finally agree.