A student has said more needs to be done to prevent spiking after the government announced new measures to protect students.
Poppy Read-Pitt, from the University of Nottingham – who believes it was spiked in 2020 – said more information needed to be made available to first-year students.
On Tuesday, the government announced a new working group tasked with rooting out the “heinous” crime.
However, Ms Read-Pitt said more needs to be done to tackle the spread.
The government announced the group will bring together vice chancellors, police officers, activists and victims.
There follows a surge in reports of spiking at UK universities, including spiking by injection.
Last year, several women, including students, said they feared they had been attacked by people who injected them with drugs at venues, with reports from across the UK including Nottingham, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Ms Read-Pitt said she believes more of her friends are vaccinated or spied than are not.
She suspects her drink was spiked during a night out at a Nottingham nightclub during her second week at university in 2020.
The English student said education and awareness are important to address the issue.
“It’s good that this group was set up by the government – it’s good that they are doing something,” she said.
“It feels like spiking is very common. I knew spiking was a thing, but I just didn’t really see it being that widespread.
“I think education is the first step, especially for freshmen, so I think it’s important for universities to do something for students, be it courses or promotion.”
Ms Read-Pitt added bouncers should be trained to help people who may have been spiked or clubs could have a welfare specialist to help people in a vulnerable condition.
Announcing the new group, Secretary of State for Higher Education and Training Michelle Donelan said she would urge every university to adopt an anti-spiking policy by the end of the year.
“I think in order to address this terrible and heinous problem we need to work together,” she said.
“Most of these incidents happen off university or college campuses, but of course they’re important anchors in their community — we also know the night economy has a role to play here, the police have a role to play here.”
Praising institutions like Nottingham Trent University, which has been involved in running bystander intervention training for staff at nighttime venues around the city, Ms Donelan said practices like this should be widely shared.
She added the government wants to “remove some of the stigma surrounding this issue,” with a study by Students for Sustainability showing that 70% of those who think they’ve been vaccinated don’t come forward, which “leads to it that the perpetrator actually escapes, being free to attack another victim”.
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