STUDY Majority of high school seniors don’t see problems with regular pot use

Nearly 2-in-3 high school seniors don’t view regular marijuana use as harmful, the National Institute of Health’s annual Monitoring the Future survey found.

This marks the twentieth consecutive year that acceptance of regular pot use has grown among high school seniors: 55 percent approved of regular pot use in 2012. Just more than 40 percent approved in 2003. Only 1-in-3 approved in 1993.

Of those comfortable with regular pot use, only 6.5 percent reported actually using pot on a regular basis. Although that number is just a fraction of high school seniors, it is still concerning to experts.

“When you have 6.5 percent of kids who are in 12th grade taking marijuana regularly, you actually start to get concerned vis-à-vis how that ultimately will affect how their brain works,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, the National Institute on Drug Abuse director. “Studies have shown that regular use of marijuana is associated with a much higher rate of school dropout. Now, these are kids at school, so we really do not know what percentage of kids may have dropped out from the regular use of marijuana… Indicating that this number, 6.5, is perhaps an underestimation.”

Although a minority of high school seniors used pot regularly, greater amounts used it on social levels. Of the 40,000+ students who participated in the survey, nearly 23 percent of the seniors said they smoked marijuana in the month before the survey. More than 36 percent of seniors smoked marijuana within the past year.

“Kids are perceiving marijuana as much less harmful,” Dr. Volkow noted, adding the levels of THC present in joints have actually quadrupled since 1993.

Even though Gil Kerlikowske, director of National Drug Control Policy, called these findings “serious setbacks,” the survey did return some good news: The use of alcohol, cigarettes, inhalants and synthetic marijuana are in steady states of decline.