Want Better Grades? Lay Off Weed

Marijuana is 'no big deal,' students say — but they're only hurting themselves

by Carleen Wild

More and more college kids think there’s nothing wrong with marijuana — so more and more of them (no surprise) are using the drug.

The latest Monitoring the Future study showed that college student marijuana use continues a nearly decade-long increase. In 2015, 38 percent of college students said they had used marijuana in the prior 12 months, up from 30 percent in 2006.

“This increase in use and decrease in perceived risk of harm should be taken seriously,” said one researcher.

Daily or near-daily use of marijuana by students (meaning they’ve used it 20 or more times in the prior 30 days) has also increased in recent years for college students. It rose from 3.5 percent in 2007 to 5.9 percent in 2014 — the highest level of daily use measured in the last 34 years.

“Sanjay Gupta has been running around CNN for years now basically saying what the benefits of [medical] marijuana are,” said John Schulenberg, one of the study’s lead researchers and a research professor at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.

“Hearing ‘it’s not such a dangerous drug and has beneficial effects for some people’ has [affected] attitudes. But I think the people for whom it’s demonstrated to have beneficial [medical] effects are actually a very small portion of the ones who have the prescriptions,” Schulenberg told LifeZette.

“We also know that a very large proportion of the country, older Americans, have had some experience with marijuana and most of them don’t think there have been any adverse effects from that. But they weren’t necessarily using the [strong] marijuana that’s on the street today, nor using necessarily as heavily as so many young people do today,” he said.

Since 2003, the number of college-age students who view regular use of marijuana as dangerous has fallen sharply — from 58 percent in 2003 to 33 percent by 2015.

College Student Drug Use.

 

“This increase in use and decrease in perceived risk of harm regarding marijuana use should be taken seriously by college administrators, parents, and students themselves. We know through other research that frequent marijuana use can adversely affect academic performance and college completion,” said Schulenberg.

“The brains of young people are still developing until they’re about 25 years old. Heavy use [of] marijuana has some adverse affects on that development.”

The study also showed a decrease in narcotic use and stimulant drugs among college students, though about one in 10 college students still report using them in the prior 12 months.

College students also reported a decrease in smoking overall, something Schulenberg said in general is a real positive to see in terms of long-term health gains. High school students, however, have dramatically higher rates of smoking. In 2015, 23 percent of them indicated past-month smoking, compared to 11 percent among the college students.

There was little or no change noted in alcohol consumption. Heavy consumption and binge drinking remain major concerns on college campuses.

Over the years 2011 to 2015 combined, about one in nine college students reported having 10 or more drinks in a row on at least one occasion in the prior two weeks, while one in 25 reported having 15 or more drinks in a row at least once in the same interval.

"Drinking at these levels can result in alcohol poisoning, serious accidents, and a host of unwise and dangerous behaviors," said Lloyd Johnston, the study's principal investigator and ISR research professor, in a statement. "So this remains a serious problem to be addressed."