Daily marijuana use at 30-year high on campus University of Michigan rightOriginal StudyPosted by Jared Wadley-Michigan on September 8 2014


In 2013 39 percent of American college students indicated they  d used an illicit drug in the preceding year  that  s up from 34 percent in the 2006 survey.Most of this increase is attributable to a rising proportion using marijuana according to scientists.Daily marijuana use is now at the highest rate among college students in more than three decades. Half (51 percent) of all full-time college students today have used an illicit drug at some time in their lives. Roughly 4 in 10 (39 percent) have used one or more such drugs in just the 12 months preceding the survey.The results are based on a nationally representative sample of some 1100 students enrolled full time in a 2- or 4-year college in spring 2013. The survey is part of the long-term Monitoring the Future (MTF) study which also tracks substance use among the nation  s secondary students and older adults under research grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.Marijuana has remained the most widely used illicit drug over the 34 years that MTF has tracked substance use by college students but the level of use has varied considerably over time. In 2006 30 percent of the nation  s college students said they used marijuana in the prior 12 months whereas in 2013 nearly 36 percent indicated doing so.Of perhaps greater importance daily or near-daily use of marijuana  defined as 20 or more occasions of use in the prior 30 days  has been on the rise. The recent low was 3.5 percent in 2007 but the rate had risen to 5.1 percent by 2013. This is the highest rate of daily use observed among college students since 1981  a third of a century ago  says Lloyd Johnston the principal investigator of the MTF study. In other words one in every 20 college students was smoking pot on a daily or near-daily basis in 2013 including one in every 11 males and one in every 34 females. To put this into a longer-term perspective from 1990 to 1994 fewer than one in 50 college students used marijuana that frequently. Nonmedical use of the amphetamine Adderall used by some students to stay awake and concentrate when preparing for tests or trying to finish homework ranks second among the illicit drugs being used in college.Eleven percent of college students in 2013  or one in every nine  indicated some Adderall use without medical supervision in the prior 12 months.The use of psychostimulants including Adderall and Ritalin has nearly doubled since the low point in 2008 though there was no further increase in this measure between 2012 and 2013.The next most frequently used illicit drugs by college students are ecstasy hallucinogens and narcotic drugs other than heroin with each of these three having about 5 percent of college students reporting any use in the prior 12 months.Ecstasy use after declining considerably between 2002 and 2007 from 9.2 percent annual prevalence to 2.2 percent has made somewhat of a comeback on campus. It rose to 5.8 percent using in the prior 12 months in 2012 and was at 5.3 percent in 2013. Hallucinogen use among college students has remained at about 5 percent since 2007 following an earlier period of decline.The use of narcotic drugs other than heroin like Vicodin and OxyContin peaked in 2006 with 8.8 percent of college students indicating any past-year use without medical supervision. Past-year use of these dangerous drugs by college students has since declined to 5.4 percent in 2012 where it remained in 2013.Use of synthetic marijuana which used to be legally available and was sold over-the-counter in convenience stores and other shops ranked fairly high in 2011 with past-year use at more than 7 percent of college students that year.Use has fallen sharply in the two years since however to just over 2 percent in 2013 (secondary school students have shown a similar recent drop in their use of synthetic marijuana according to the Monitoring the Future annual surveys of middle and high school students).The use of salvia an herb in the mint family has fallen sharply since 2009 when it was first added to the study from 5.8 percent of college students reporting use in the prior 12 months to just 1 percent in 2013.The use of some other illicit drugs by college students also has declined in the past decade including crack cocaine powder cocaine tranquilizers and hallucinogens other than LSD (which involves psilocybin e.g.  magic mushrooms ).Another encouraging result is that a number of illicit drugs have been used in the prior 12 months by fewer than 1 percent of college students in 2013. These drugs include inhalants crack cocaine heroin methamphetamine  bath salts  GHB and ketamine.In general female college students (who are now in the majority) are less likely to use these drugs than are their male counterparts. For example 40 percent of college males used marijuana in the past year compared to 33 percent of college females. Also 24 percent of males versus 16 percent of females used some illicit drug other than marijuana.Daily or near-daily use of marijuana was particularly concentrated among college males with nearly 9 percent of them indicating marijuana use on 20 or more occasions in the prior 30 days compared with only 3 percent of college females.There remains plenty of alcohol use on the nation  s college campuses with about three quarters (76 percent) of college students indicating drinking at least once in the past 12 months and more than half (58 percent) saying they had gotten drunk at least once in that period.In fact more than a third (35 percent) said they had consumed five or more drinks on at least one occasion during the two weeks just prior to the survey. Particularly worrisome are rates of what the investigators call  extreme binge drinking.  Averaged across years 2005 to 2013 they find that one in eight (13 percent) college students had 10 or more drinks and one in 20 (5 percent) had 15 or more drinks in a row in the past two weeks.Despite these high rates of involvement alcohol use has declined some on campus in recent years. In 2008 69 percent said they had at least one drink in the prior 30 days whereas in 2013 that number had dropped to 63 percent. Similarly the percent indicating that they got drunk during that period fell from a recent high of 48 percent in 2006 to 40 percent by 2011 where it then remained through 2013.To some degree these declines may reflect the declines observed among high school seniors before they even went off to college since MTF finds that drinking rates have been declining and are at historic lows among high school students.The age peers of college students  that is young adults who are also one to four years out of high school but are not full-time college students  have roughly equivalent proportions to college students in their past-year use of any illicit drug or any illicit drug other than marijuana.They also have quite similar rates of several specific drugs including past-year use of marijuana ecstasy hallucinogens other than LSD and extreme binge drinking.However they are twice as likely as college students to be daily marijuana users and they have annual prevalence rates of use for several particularly dangerous drugs that are roughly two to three times as high as rates found among college students. These include crack cocaine crystal methamphetamine heroin and narcotic drugs other than heroin (including OxyContin and Vicodin specifically).The noncollege segment also has a daily cigarette smoking rate roughly three times what it is among college students but they have a somewhat lower rate of having been drunk in the prior 30 days (34 percent) than do college students (40 percent).

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