Both daily and less frequent use of marijuana among college students has risen sharply, to the highest prevalence since the Monitoring The Future study began.

In a silver lining aspect, cigarette smoking continues to decline - marijuana use surpassed daily cigarette smoking in 2014.  Smoking tobacco using a hookah (a type of water pipe) in the prior 12 months rose substantially among college students, from 26 percent in 2013 to 33 percent in 2014. 

The series of national surveys of U.S. college students, part of the University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future study, shows that marijuana use has been growing slowly on the nation’s campuses since 2006. The Monitoring the Future study is now in its 41st year and has surveyed nationally representative samples of full-time college students one to four years beyond high school each year for 35 years, starting in 1980. The annual samples of college students have ranged between 1,000 and 1,500 per year.

Daily or near-daily marijuana use was reported by 5.9 percent of college students in 2014, the highest rate since complete college data became available in 1980. This rate of use is up from 3.5 percent in 2007, defined as use on 20 or more occasions in the prior 30 days. 

Other measures of marijuana use have also shown an increase: The percent using marijuana once or more in the prior 30 days rose from 17 percent in 2006 to 21 percent in 2014. Use in the prior 12 months rose from 30 percent in 2006 to 34 percent in 2014. Both of these measures leveled in 2014.

Much of this increase may be due to the fact that marijuana use has come to be seen as less dangerous by adolescents and young adults, which is not accurate. 55 percent of all 19-to-22-year-old high school graduates saw regular marijuana use as dangerous in 2006, only 35 percent saw it as dangerous by 2014.

The study also found that the proportion of college students using any illicit drug, including marijuana, in the prior 12 months rose from 34 percent in 2006 to 41 percent in 2013 before falling off some to 39 percent in 2014. That seven-year increase was driven primarily by the increase in marijuana use, though marijuana was not the only drug on the rise.

The proportion of college students using any illicit drug other than marijuana in the prior 12 months increased from 15 percent in 2008—the recent low point—to 21 percent in 2014, including a continuing increase in 2014. The increase appears attributable mostly to college students’ increased use of amphetamines (without a doctor’s orders) and use of ecstasy. 

College students’ nonmedical use of amphetamines in the prior 12 months nearly doubled between 2008 (when 5.7 percent said they used) and 2012 (when 11.1 percent used), before leveling at 10.1 percent in 2014.

Ecstasy (MDMA, sometimes called Molly), had somewhat of a comeback in use among college students from 2007 through 2012, with past 12-month use more than doubling from 2.2 percent in 2007 to 5.8 percent in 2012, before leveling. Previously, ecstasy had fallen from favor among college students. By 2004, it had fallen to quite low levels and then remained at low levels through 2007.

Past-year use of cocaine showed a statistically significant increase from 2.7 percent in 2013 to 4.4 percent in 2014. 

The use of synthetic marijuana (also called K-2 or spice) has been dropping sharply since its use was first measured in 2011. At that time, 7.4 percent of college students indicated having used synthetic marijuana in the prior 12 months; by 2014 the rate had fallen to just 0.9 percent, including a significant decline in use in 2014. One reason for the decline in synthetic drug use is that an increasing number of young people see it as dangerous.

Likewise, college students’ use of salvia—a hallucinogenic plant which became popular in recent years—fell from an annual prevalence of 5.8 percent in 2009 to just 1.1 percent in 2014.

The nonmedical use of narcotic drugs—which has accounted for an increasing number of deaths in recent years according to official statistics—actually has been declining among college students, falling from 8.8 percent reporting past-year use in 2006 down to 4.8 percent by 2014. This is a particularly welcome improvement from a public health point of view, note the investigators.

There is no evidence of a shift over from narcotic drugs to heroin use in this population. Use of heroin has been very low among college students over the past five years or so—lower than it was in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The non-medical use of tranquilizers by college students has fallen by nearly half since 2003, when 6.9 percent reported past-year use, to 2014, when 3.5 percent did.

The use of LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs, once popular in this age group, remains at low levels of use on campus, with past-year usage rates at 2.2 percent and 3.2 percent, respectively. And use of the so-called club drugs (Ketamine, GHB, Rohypnol) remains very low. Further, the use of so-called bath salts (synthetic stimulants often sold over the counter) never caught on among college students, who have a negligible rate of use.

In sum, quite a number of drugs have been fading in popularity on U.S. college campuses in recent years, and a similar pattern is found among youth who do not attend college. Two of the newer drugs, synthetic marijuana and salvia, have shown steep declines in use. Other drugs are showing more gradual declines, including narcotic drugs other than heroin, sedatives and tranquilizers—all used nonmedically—as well as inhalants and hallucinogens.

Except marijuana - past-year and past-month marijuana use increased from 2006 through 2013 before leveling; and daily marijuana use continues to grow, reaching the highest level seen in the past 35 years in 2014 (5.9 percent). Amphetamine use grew fairly sharply on campus between 2008 and 2012, and it then stabilized at high levels not seen since the mid-1980s. 

63 percent of college students in 2014 said that they have had an alcoholic beverage at least once in the prior 30 days, down from 67 percent in 2000 and down considerably from 82 percent in 1981. The proportion of the nation’s college students saying they have been drunk in the past 30 days was 43 percent in 2014, down some from 48 percent in 2006. 

Between 1980 and 2014, college students’ rates of "binge" drinking declined 9 percentage points from 44 percent to 35 percent, while their noncollege peers declined 12 percentage points from 41 percent to 29 percent, and high school seniors’ rates declined 22 percentage points from 41 percent to 19 percent. 

Non-addictive pastimes, like e-cigarettes, cigars and flavored cigarillos, stayed about the same.