But studies have shown that regular marijuana use is not healthy for college students. Contrary to popular belief that marijuana can relieve stress, heavy use in young adults is associated with changes in the brain that impair a student’s motivation, anxiety levels and cognitive processing.

“‘We know from our research and that of others that heavy marijuana use is associated with poor academic performance and noncompletion of college...Marijuana use has remained steady in recent years among the nation’s high school seniors, so this increase among college students suggests it has something to do with college and young adulthood experiences,’” says John Schulenberg, PhD, in a follow-up study of the Monitoring the Future national survey from 2017.

Decreased functioning from marijuana use isn’t a sign of being lazy or relaxed - it’s the result of systemic impairment on brain development. One joint study between researchers from Northwestern University and Harvard Medical School compared MRI’s of students who had reported frequent marijuana use to those who had little or no history of marijuana use. The scans showed that the marijuana users showed a structural brain difference. “In particular, the nucleus accumbens—which is a brain region linked to reward processing and motivation—was larger and altered in its shape and structure in the marijuana users compared to non-users. Of particular interest to the researchers was that the nucleus accumbens was abnormally large, and its alteration in size, shape and density was directly correlated to how many joints an individual had smoked,” the study, outlined in Psychology Today, explained.