BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY’S EDITORIAL TEAM

When TJ McGee overdosed in his UC Berkeley dorm room two years ago, his roommates hesitated before calling for help. He lay on the floor, pale and seizing, while they weighed the risk: call for help and potentially face university consequences, or wait and hope.

That hesitation is exactly the problem Assembly Bill 602 is designed to fix.

Signed into law in October 2025 and taking effect in July 2026, AB 602 requires all campuses in California’s public university systems, both California State University and University of California, to offer students rehabilitation services for drug and alcohol use before taking disciplinary action against them following an overdose.

What makes the law stand out is who drafted it: a group of students from UC Berkeley, UC Davis, and other universities, working alongside Assemblymember Matt Haney of San Francisco.

The fear that keeps students from calling for help

Under existing campus policies, students at schools like UC Berkeley can face disciplinary action, including removal from campus housing, for substance use. Violate the policy more than once, and the university can permanently remove a student from campus entirely.

The result is a system where calling for help after an overdose could trigger consequences that damage or end a student’s academic career.

“In that moment, when someone is overdosing, the stakes are life and death. But for the person on the ground, there is no guarantee that help will mean healing,” McGee told California Assembly members at a committee hearing in April 2025.

After his own overdose, the university placed him on academic probation. Months of recovery followed with no institutional support. “No one asked if he was OK. No one pointed him towards support… 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,” he said at a Senate committee hearing in July 2025.

Saanvi Arora, a fourth-year student at UC Berkeley who helped draft the bill, said the fear of consequences is real enough that some students simply opt out of getting help. “They would much rather just see what happens and hope that they’re OK,” she said. “Leave it up to fate, honestly, than call or go downstairs and bring a trusted campus official to help them.”

Students who lived it wrote the bill

Arora and Aditi Hariharan, president of the UC Student Association and a student at UC Davis, both came to it through loss. Arora lost a close friend to an overdose at 15. Hariharan watched a high school friend struggle with alcohol addiction during her first year of college, unable to access campus recovery resources, and eventually drop out.

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

Haney, who agreed to help the students after they reached out to his office, said the problem was both urgent and solvable. “We should protect students from these hugely harmful academic consequences when they do the right thing and call for help,” he said.

What the law covers and where it draws the line

AB 602 is not a blanket amnesty. Earlier drafts included protections for bystanders who call for help and had no cap on how often students could avoid discipline by opting for rehab. University officials pushed back on both provisions, concerned that the original language could shield students from consequences for unrelated conduct violations.

The final version limits overdose protections to once per academic term and does not extend coverage to students who call for help on behalf of someone else.

Cal State has not yet built a systemwide program to implement the law. “We don’t have a program that’s directly tied to this bill just yet. When it comes to rehabilitation services, that is certainly one of the big questions that we’re still assessing,” said Ray Murillo, Cal State’s interim assistant vice chancellor for student affairs.

Six UC campuses, including Berkeley and Davis, already run collegiate recovery programs. The law builds on that foundation and raises the expectation statewide. Starting this summer, students at California public universities will have a legal right to treatment before punishment. For the students who wrote the bill, that right is the whole point.

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