According to researchers at the University of Michigan, there has been an increase of daily marijuana users among U.S. college students. It has surpassed daily cigarette smoking for the first time since 2014. It appears that college students nowadays view marijuana as less dangerous than they did in the past.
According to Time, the survey was conducted as part of the University's "Monitoring the Future" study and results show that 5.9 percent of students prefer to smoke marijuana on a near-daily basis compared to smoking cigarette with the same frequency in 2014. This is the highest rate of marijuana use since the survey began in 1980. The researchers report that one in every 17 students is smoking marijuana daily or almost every day. In the study, "daily" means smoking 20 or more occasions for the past 30 days. In contrast, only 5 percent of students smoke cigarettes daily.
Additionally, there has been a significant increase of marijuana users since 2006. It was reported that 21 percent of students are using marijuana at least once in the last 30 days in 2014, compared to 17 percent in 2006. Moreover, around 34 percent of students said that they had smoked marijuana at least once in the last year, compared to 30 percent in 2006.
Lloyd Johnston, the principal investigator of the study said in a statement "It's clear that for the past seven or eight years there has been an increase in marijuana use among the nation's college students. And this largely parallels an increase we have been seeing among high school seniors."
This increase may be explained with the change in attitude of students towards marijuana. According to CBS News, 55 percent of students aging 19-22 years old view regular marijuana as dangerous in 2006. However by 2014, only 35 percent of the students view marijuana as such. The decline in cigarette smoking on the other hand follows an increase of other form of tobacco or nicotine intake. Smoking tobacco using hookah has risen to 33 percent for the last 12 months compared to around 26 percent in 2013.
"These declines in smoking at college are largely the result of fewer of these students smoking when they were still in high school," Johnston said. "Nevertheless, it is particularly good news that their smoking rates have fallen so substantially."
