It's been more than 35 years since Timothy Leary roamed Harvard's psychology department, introducing colleagues and undergraduates to psychedelic drugs.

But while the LSD-guru, who died in 1996, had become just another episode in Harvard's colorful past, the College still closely mirrors national trends of illicit drug use.

According to a survey conducted by The Crimson this month, nearly one in four undergraduates has used illegal drugs at least once while at Harvard, a figure on par with national and School of Public Health studies on college drug use.

But the results diverge from national figures when it comes to gender, and they also show a sizable difference in use across concentrations.

College administrators say they aren't happy with the news, but they accept illicit drug use as an inevitable part of college life, particularly one where the social scene is lacking. Meanwhile, students says there is little that can be done by administrators or peer groups to curtail drug use on campus.

High on the Humanities

While 24 percent of students reported drug use, only a scattered few acknowledged using cocaine or heroin. However, 5 percent of the 421 surveyed said they had used hallucinogens in their time as undergraduates. Twenty-three percent of those surveyed said they had used marijuana. The margin of error for all questions is less than 5 percent.

While a number of surveys have shown that men are more likely to use drugs than women, Harvard students of bothgenders are equally likely to have used drugs.

Of 204 women and 204 men surveyed by phone atrandom, 49 of each group reported using drugswhile at the College.

Concentration, however, had a strongcorrelation with drug use.

Greatly outdistancing their peers, 41 percentof humanities concentrators reported they had useddrugs at least once while at the College.

Natural-science concentrators reported 18percent has used drugs. In the social sciences, 24percent said they had used drugs. For these therequestions, margin of errors was less than 6percent.

Countering Nancy Reagan-era stereotypes aboutgetting in with the "wrong crowd," students whoreported using drugs were not any more likely thantheir peers to report having friends who useddrugs.

Students who had used drugs reported that, onaverage, 18 percent of their friends used drugs,while those who haven't used said that 16 percentof their friends have. The difference is notstatistically significant.

On Par With the Nation

Henry Wechsler, a professor at the School ofPublic Health whose work on the subject Dean ofthe College Harry R. Lewis '68 calls"authoritative," is quick to point out thatHarvard students' drug use is slightly below thenational average.