High school and College Students are More Likely to Use Cannabis than Opioids

It seems that the growing acceptance of cannabis has reflected positively on the United States’ young adult population. According to a recent report by the University of Michigan, both high school and college students are more likely to use cannabis than any other opioid on the market.

The University has been running this particular study for 40 years, looking for trends and fluctuations in the use of drugs, tobacco and alcohol among students. The most recent findings revealed that people who are in their 40s and 50s used many more drugs in their youth than teens and young adults today, according to WGBH News.

Lead investigator of the study, Lloyd Johnston, was surprised by the findings, “The proportion of Americans in their 40s and 50s who have experience with illicit drugs is quite shocking. It’s a great majority,” Johnston stated.

The drop in teen drug use happened over time, and slowly it has helped modern students to avoid psychoactive substances and decrease the usage of cigarettes as well (20.5 percent of students say that they smoked in 2015, versus 44.5 who said so in 1999). Well, with the exception of cannabis.

The study has helped the university recognize trends, and more recently, the trend has reversed for cannabis in comparison to other substances. “For the most part, among both college and high school students, their perception of how dangerous [cannabis] is has dropped like a rock,” Johnston continued. “The use of the internet has certainly increased information exchange from objective sources and other people the same age. Perhaps young people today are more informed about things,” he suggests.

Whether through the internet or word of mouth, information about cannabis in a positive light has obviously reached the world’s youth.