Marijuana use rose significantly among U.S. college students in 2020, while use of alcohol, a more commonly misused substance among the age group, declined.
The changes came as most higher education students took classes remotely and lived off campus because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which may have influenced their habits, according to a September report from the Monitoring the Future survey.
Conducted annually by researchers at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research and funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse, Monitoring the Future is an annual drug use survey of eighth, 10th and 12th grade students. A companion arm of the survey studies high school graduates as they age, with the oldest participants now in their 60s.
The September report, “Monitoring the Future 2020 Volume 2: College Students and Adults Ages 19–60,” zeroed in on over 1,500 people, ages 19-22, who kept track of their alcohol use from March to November 2020 — a time when the pandemic was sweeping the U.S. The study included both college and non-college young adults.
The study found an increase in cannabis use, with about 44% of college students using the drug at least once over the past year, an increase from 38% recorded five years prior. Twenty-five percent of college students and 29% of non-students of similar age used the drug each month in 2020. Daily use of cannabis for college students rose to 8% from 5% in 2015. Thirteen percent of non-students used the drug daily last year, which held steady from previous years.
College students changed their uptake of drugs and alcohol during the COVID-19 pandemic, a recent report finds.
Photo by Dusanpetkovic, courtesy iStockphoto
The perceived risk of marijuana use also fell in 2020, reaching all-time lows with only as many as 8% of young adults saying they saw a great risk of harm for experimental use of marijuana. Changing attitudes toward marijuana use, driven in part by legalization, may have changed perceptions, the report said.
Meanwhile, 56% of college students used alcohol over the past month, a decrease of 6 percentage points from 2019. Binge drinking, defined as four or five drinks within two hours, dropped from 32% to 24%. With the decline, binge drinking rates were the same for both groups of young adults.
“This is the first year where binge drinking was similar between the two groups,” John Schulenberg, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan and principal investigator of the Monitoring the Future report, said in a news release. “While binge drinking has been gradually declining among college students for the past few decades, this is a new historic low, which may reflect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of reduced time with college friends.”
Along with marijuana use, psychedelic drug use among college students rose to 9%, almost twice that of 2019. Use of psychedelics, which include LSD and psilocybin, among non-college young adults did not increase.
The researchers suggested that isolation and boredom brought on by the pandemic may have contributed to an increase in drug use among young adults. The decline in alcohol use for college students was likely because students were mostly off campus, so peer pressure and drinking opportunities were lower.
“The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically changed the way that young people interact with one another and offers us an opportunity to examine whether drug-taking behavior has shifted through these changes,” said Nora Volkow, MD, director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse, in a news release. “Moving forward, it will be critical to investigate how and when different substances are used among this young population, and the impact of these shifts over time.”
Results from the 2021 Monitoring the Future survey of U.S. teens are expected to be released in December.
For more information, visit www.monitoringthefuture.org.
- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association
