College Students and Their Substance Use
Cannabis. Marijuana. Hemp. Weed. Pot. Dope. Grass. Mary Jane. Bud. Ganja. Reefer. Dank. The Devil’s Lettuce etc. One person may wonder, how can so many words mean one thing? But to a stoner, these words are used daily. Marijuana use is especially prevalent for the younger generation, namely college students.
According to the University of Michigan, who performed a study on marijuana use in colleges in the United States, marijuana use among full-time college students is at an all time high. In 2016, they reported that 39% of full-time college students had used cannabis at least once in the past year. Even more shocking, 4.9% of full-time college students indicated that they were daily or near daily users of the illegal drug. When comparing this statistic to the Morningside student body, that would mean about 65 students at Morningside are daily or near daily users of marijuana.
Between the ages of 19 to 22 is when young adults show an increase in experimenting with drugs and alcohol but the statistic is much higher for college students. The American Journal of Public Health found that the college setting almost promotes substance use, but they suggest that this could be because for most students this is the first time living without supervision.
For Sarah Baker, a student at Morningside College, she actually started smoking at the astonishing age of 13. Sarah states, “I was young and influential. I was doing a lot of new things at the time.” Sarah falls into the daily user category. She smokes four to five times throughout the day. Sarah has anxiety and claims that smoking marijuana helps her get through the day.
When asked about stoner culture in colleges she states that she has noticed three types of stoners. “You’ve got the stereotypical stoner that is lazy and is doing nothing with their life, the stoner that you wouldn’t suspect is a stoner, and then the third is the person that uses for medical reasons,” says Sarah.
Sarah is definitely in support of the legalization of marijuana but she does admit that it isn’t for everyone. “I think it’s great for certain people and it can be a bad thing as well for others.”
Morgan Simpson, another Morningside student, agrees with Sarah’s view. Morgan claims that there are benefits to smoking marijuana but it depends on the person because it affects everyone differently. Unlike Sarah, Morgan is a recreational smoker. She only smokes about once a week, sometimes less.
Morgan started smoking marijuana in high school at the age of 17. She was friends with an older crowd at the time who smoked so she decided to try it out for herself. Morgan thinks that stoner culture in college is different than most people think. She states that it isn’t just the outcasts that do it in college like is usually portrayed. “I think that it is more than a culture. Literally everyone is doing it. All cliques, all types of people,” she says.
Patrick Meyers, a professor at Morningside, has noticed the change in stigma around marijuana. Back in his day marijuana was thought of as a gateway drug and he thinks that it is still thought of that way by the older generation. Patrick is for the legalization of marijuana, as well stating, “I see very high functioning people using marijuana recreationally.”
Patrick thinks that one of the main reasons that marijuana should be legalized is because of the racial discrimination behind the drug. He thinks that it is the “driver of change even for people that don’t use”.
Patrick started smoking marijuana in high school at the age of 16 because of peer pressure. He admits that his first time was not a great experience. “You end up having to buy it somewhere shady and end up doing it somewhere shady. It doesn’t feel safe and it doesn’t feel recreational. No one wants to break the law, particularly in high school.”
When he was a young adult he only smoked about four to five times a year. Patrick ended up quitting at around 27 years old because he was trying to quit smoking cigarettes at the time and felt like smoking marijuana was a trigger for him.
Stoner culture to Patrick doesn’t represent a lot of the people that smoke recreationally. He claims that there is a subset of the culture that is true as in any culture but it doesn’t represent all people that smoke pot. The one thing that comes to mind for him when thinking of stoner culture is the famous stoner movie Half Baked that was released in 1998.
Even though students are more prevalent to try marijuana for the first time in college, most the time it doesn’t stick. Most people live in areas where it is illegal and like Patrick said, no one wants to break the law. This trend could be changing soon though with the national legalization of marijuana on the horizon. The Iowa Department of Public Health announced last Tuesday that Sioux City will be opening their first medical marijuana dispensary due to open as soon as December 1.