I have said in the past and will say again, I dislike these types of posts because they are completely speculative. With 38,000 students, there will be some doing drugs. Most will not.
If you want your child to be in a completely drug free environment, there are few colleges around that provide that. Some students and administrators at some colleges are more relaxed than others about drug and alcohol use. Regarding Greek life, for men especially, it is very difficult to find a fraternity on any campus that hasn’t been subjected to disciplinary action for alcohol violations, at some point in its history. Some get booted off campus for more serious violations and are unofficial.
Any colleges that participate in federal student aid programs are required to provide a Clery Report. There you can find actual data that can at least provide numbers of arrests and offences due to drugs, alcohol, sexual crimes, robbery, etc…
Bear in mind that numbers alone are only part of the picture. How vigilant are campus police? How strict or lax is the administration? Is there an atmosphere at the college that encourages students to report offenses, or does the college try to sweep them under the rug? Is there a large commuter population? What percentage of students live on campus? Is the Clery report differentiating on campus vs off campus, where many parties, etc… happen, and where a lot of students live? Bottom line, these numbers are not definitive on their own and provide basic information.
I compared colleges with similar populations.
Look at page 30 of the report for CU Boulder: https://www.colorado.edu/clery/2024-ASFSR
Looks pretty bad.
Now look at CSU Fullerton, where 97% of students live off campus because it is primarily a commuter school. https://hr.fullerton.edu/documents/risk-management/Annual-Security-Report-2024-3-14-2025-ati.pdf
Wow, so safe!
Indiana, scroll about 1/3, no page numbers: https://protect.iu.edu/iu-police-department/campus-security-reports/annual-security-reports/annual-reports-html/asfsr.html
A lot of a particularly heinous crime, unfortunately.
Page 54-55, Kennesaw State, 87% commuters: 2024 Annual Fire and Safety Report - Page 54-55
Another safe school.
Alabama, page 40: https://police.ua.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/2024-University-of-Alabama-Annual-Security-and-Fire-Report.pdf
Looks like some partying going on at Alabama.
Page 120, UCSD: https://www.police.ucsd.edu/docs/annualclery.pdf
Better lock your cars there!
You get the idea. Some numbers are worse than others. Think about why. If you just google colleges with worst crime, UC Berkely and Michigan come up, as does Alabama. Most college crime stats are due to alcohol.
Make decisions based on as much research as you can find, and don’t trust that rumors are definitive. Temple University, long a whipping boy for the “most dangerous college” mantra, doesn’t feature in the list of most dangerous colleges. Nor does Boulder. Other famous names do:
https://www.degreechoices.com/blog/most-dangerous-college-campuses/