By Scott Kaptur > University of Maryland, College Park | photos Ryder Haske

The sale of illicit substances on college campuses nationwide is more prevalent than you might think. That point was made shockingly clear by the May bust of a massive drug ring at San Diego State University (SDSU). Ninety-six people, including seventy-five students, were arrested in the largest campus drug bust in U.S. history.

While this was the largest bust, the raid on SDSU was far from an isolated incident.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, there were 11 thousand drug-related arrests on college campuses in 2000. At the time, that was a 10% increase from the previous year. That number increased in 2001 to over 12 thousand. In 2003, there were 12,756 drug arrests on college campuses.

Still, the San Diego State arrests only serve to remind us that overwhelmed police forces nationwide are struggling to keep up with an increasingly sophisticated drug trade.

A study at the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found that while rates of drinking and bingeing remained constant between 1993 and 2005, the rate of daily marijuana use among students more than doubled. The use of harder drugs like cocaine and heroin also rose 52 percent over the same period.

But there are serious consequences for students who get caught possessing, using or selling drugs, a painful lesson for many students who gambled with their educations and lost. Students can be expelled from school, evicted from housing and become ineligible for any future federal financial aid. But the ramifications stretch far beyond the college gates.

One student arrested at San Diego State was just days away from earning his Master