According to a recent report, marijuana is now more commonly used by American college students than cigarettes.
Over the past few years, cigarette use in America has been steadily declining; hardly surprising considering smoking tobacco is “the single largest preventable cause of death and disease in the United States.” However, it appears not all smoking habits are decreasing in popularity – especially for the nation’s undergrads.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have reported that a mere 15.2% of adult Americans are regularly smoking cigarettes. In comparison to this historically low figure, for the first time ever, the country’s next generation of thinkers, innovators and creators are choosing pot over tobacco
“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,” Lloyd Johnston, the study’s lead investigator, said in a statement. “This largely parallels an increase we have been seeing among high school seniors.”
In the annul Monitoring the Future report, researchers at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research reported that 5.9 percent of the college students they surveyed said they smoked marijuana at least 20 in the previous month. Under the schools criteria, this figure is high enough to constitute as ‘daily use’. In contrast, around only 5 percent of the respondents surveyed said they smoked tobacco regularly; that is 14 percent lower than the report’s 1999 figures.
This 0.9% difference may seem minuscule; however, this newly released figure has revealed a monumental change in the smoking habits of college student that could help pave the way for the renewal of the country’s drug policies.
Image Credit: Drug Enforcement Administration
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