Marijuana Use Reaches 30-year High

According to a new survey, the percentage of college students who say smoke marijuana on a daily basis has reached its highest peak in more than three decades. in 2014, 5.9 percent of college students said that they smoked marijuana 20 or more times in the previous month. That number has gone up from 3.5 percent in 2007 and is the highest rate of near daily use reported since the survey began, according to researchers at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. The survey is called Monitoring the Future and is given to 1,000 to 1,500 college students each year.

According to Yahoo, in 2014, near-daily use of marijuana was more common than daily cigarette use for the first time. Only 5.2 percent of students smoked cigarettes every day, which is down from nearly 19 percent in 1999. The percentage of college students who said that they used the drug at least once a month increased from 17 percent in 2006 to approximately 21 percent in 2014. 

The increase in marijuana use can be directly linked to a change in how young people view the drug itself. “In 2006, 55 percent of 19- to 22-year-olds said they viewed regular marijuana use as dangerous, but in 2014, just 35 percent said the same”, the survey found. Decriminalization of the drug in several states has also made marijuana use more acceptable.

“A similar rise in marijuana use has also been seen among high school students,” according to Lloyd Johnston, the research scientist at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, who led the study.

Marijuana versus Adderall

The survey also discovered that the use of amphetamines such as Adderall are also on the rise for college-aged students. “In 2012, 11.1 percent of college students said they had used amphetamines for nonmedical reasons in the past year, up from 5.7 percent in 2008,” according to lifescience.com.

“It seems likely that this increase in amphetamine use on the college campus resulted from more students using these drugs to try to increase their ability to concentrate and get better grades.” Johnston explained.

Amphetamines are stimulants that are sometimes used to treat patients with ADHD, but they can also be used by people who have not been diagnosed with ADHD and do not have prescriptions for the medication, which makes the acquisition and use of the drug illicit for them. The trade-off between the illicit use of a legal drug that enables the user to increase their ability to concentrate is an easy choice for college students and young professionals, but the drug can be seriously dangerous for older people with high blood pressure, heart conditions, glaucoma, or histories of depression, anxiety, according to drugs.com, which lists 18 different conditions that argue against the use of Adderall by the people who have those conditions.

Marijuana versus Synthetic Marijuana

the use of other drugs have been on the decline lately. For example, the percentage of students who have used synthetic marijuana (K2 or spice) in the last year or so, dropped significantly from 7.4 percent in 2011 to roughly 0.9 percent in 2014.

The use of illicit drugs for nonmedical reasons also plummeted as well. Only 4.8 percent of college students said that they used these drugs during the last year, compared with 8.8 percent back in 2006.

Marijuana versus Tobacco

Even though there are fewer college students smoking cigarettes, there has been an increase in hookah use. Last year, 33 percent of the students said that they used a hookah and that is up from just 26 percent in 2013.

Marijuana versus Alcohol

Besides illicit drugs, the use of alcohol consumption was also factored in the study. According to University of Michigan News, while 63 percent of college students in 2014 said that they have had an alcoholic beverage at least once in the prior 30 days, that figure is down a bit from 67 percent in 2000 and down considerably from 82 percent in 1981.

The percentage of the college students who said they have been under the influence of alcohol in the past 30 days was fell to 43 percent, which is down from 48 percent back in 2006. Between 1980-2014, college students’ rates of alcohol consumption have declined 9 percentage points from 44 percent to 35 percent, while non college peers declined 12 percentage points from 41 percent to 29 percent. In the meantime, high school seniors’ alcohol rates went down 22 percentage points from 41 percent to 19 percent.

“Of particular concern is the extent of extreme binge drinking in college, first defined as having 10 or more drinks in a row at least once in the prior two weeks, and then defined as having 15 or more drinks in a row in that same time interval,” states University of Michigan News. Between 2005-2014, the numbers for those particular behaviors seen among college students are 13 percent and 5 percent respectively.

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