Cannabis and College Students in British Columbia: Attitudes, Patterns of Consumption and Perception of Harm
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Recreational use of cannabis in Canada has recently been legalized. Previous studies indicate long-term neurocognitive and cognitive sensitivity of the adolescent brain to cannabis. The present study investigates cannabis consumption among college students, including their reasons for consumption and their perceptions of its effects on their health and social functions, including learning. An online, anonymous, voluntary survey was given to students at a community college in Vancouver. Of the 320 students surveyed, 71% had consumed cannabis, 44% within the last week. A significant portion perceived harmful short-term effects (ranging from paranoia to inability to focus) and long-term impacts (ranging from decline in lung function to loss of memory). Students reported therapeutic effects such as alleviation of stress and anxiety and improved sociability. More than half reported a mix of beneficial and harmful impacts or no impacts. The reasons for consuming cannabis were recreational (52%), recreational and therapeutic (37%), and purely therapeutic (6%). Forty-three per cent (43%) consumed cannabis for therapeutic reasons including insomnia, anxiety, pain and nausea as top reasons. A significant portion of student consumers of cannabis reported harmful effects that are consistent with previous studies using objective measures. Students consume cannabis for both recreational and therapeutic reasons, even while experiencing harmful short and long-term effects. National cannabis policy, currently being revised in Canada to legalize recreational consumption, should include public education aimed at young adults.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".