College Students Smoking Marijuana

This piece of information has it that more U.S. university students are making a habit of using marijuana, which has supplanted cigarettes as the smokeable substance of choice among undergraduates who light up regularly, a study released Tuesday found.

Just under 6 per cent of the full-time students surveyed by University of Michigan researchers for the annual “Monitoring the Future” study reported using pot either every day or at least 20 times in the previous 30 days.

By contrast, 5 per cent of respondents identified themselves as heavy cigarette smokers, a steep decline from the 19 per cent who said they smoked daily in 1999.

The findings suggest that teenagers and young adults have absorbed public health warnings about the dangers of cigarettes but increasingly regard marijuana as benign or carrying few risks, lead investigator Lloyd Johnston said.