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 Substance abuse has long been tied to poor achievement, worse
graduation rates and difficulties finding and keeping good jobs. The
current study takes a closer look at grade point averages (GPAs) for
U.S. students who start college with similar academic potential but
use different amounts of pot and booze.
Compared to sober youth, students who drink a lot but don’t smoke
much pot tend to get lower grades during the first semester of
college but then achieve similar GPAs, the study found. This
comparison looks much worse for heavy users of both marijuana and
alcohol - these students started out with lower GPAs than their
sober peers and continued to get worse grades.
“We were surprised that students who consumed fairly large
quantities of alcohol alone and very little marijuana did not have a
consistent decrease in GPA,” said lead study author Shashwath Meda
of the Olin Neuropsychiary Research Center and Hartford Hospital in
Connecticut.
“Those who moderated drug use over the period of the study were able
to recover and perform better academically,” Meda added by email.
Both alcohol and pot can impair memory, attention, executive
function and the ability to identify visual and spatial differences
among objects. This can make students less efficient at studying and
retaining information in class, the researchers note in the journal
PLoS ONE.
They examined data from monthly alcohol and drug use surveys
completed by 1,142 students over four semesters starting in freshman
year. These surveys asked how many days in the past month students
smoked pot or drank, as well as the number of drinks they had on
each occasion when they consumed alcohol.
They sorted students into three groups: youth who used little or no
alcohol or marijuana; people who drank a lot but didn’t smoke much
pot; and heavy users of both substances.
Researchers also got GPA data on each participant from college and
university officials and results from the Scholastic Aptitude Test
(SAT) exams used for college admission.
“The three groups did not differ in SAT scores at the beginning of
college,” said Wayne Hall, of the Center for Youth Substance Abuse
Research at the University of Queensland in Australia.
“That makes it less likely that less intellectually able students
are more likely to get involved in heavy drinking and marijuana
use,” Hall, who wasn’t involved in the study, added by email.
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For the first semester, the mostly sober student group had an
average GPA of 3.1 and the heavy drinkers had an average GPA of
3.03, a statistically meaningful difference even though both are
roughly equivalent to a B grade. Not all colleges and universities
use the same grading process.
The heavy drinkers and pot smokers trailed farther behind, with an
average GPA of 2.66, which might be a B- or a C+. Students who cut
back on the pot did better over time than youth who remained heavy
drinkers and smokers throughout the study.
Limitations of the study include the lack of data on final GPAs and
graduation rates, the authors note. The study also didn’t examine
the difficulty of courses students chose, which could impact GPA.
Still, the findings suggest efforts to limit substance use during
the crucial first semester of college may help more students
succeed, the researchers conclude.
“For many students, high achievement during the first two years of
college provides them with skills and confidence that help propel
their performance during the final years of college,” said Dr. Mark
Olfson, a psychiatry researcher at Columbia University in New York
who wasn’t involved in the study.
“The new findings make clear the real academic risks to college
students posed by combined heavy alcohol and marijuana use,” Olfson
added by email. “Parents should be encouraged to have open
discussions about alcohol and marijuana with their children before
they go off to college.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/24FuV67 PLoS ONE, online March 8, 2017.
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