States where recreational marijuana has been made legal are seeing upticks in college applications, including from elite students. 

That is the takeaway of a study published late last year in the peer-reviewed journal Contemporary Economic Policy. 

“Using a two-way fixed effects difference-in-differences model, we investigate the effects of local recreational marijuana (RMJ) policy changes on college applications and find that the three largest state public schools reaped, on average, an almost 54% increase in applications,” the authors of the study said in the abstract. 

Recreational cannabis is currently legal for adults in 24 states and the District of Columbia, according to Pew Research Center. It is also legal in the U.S. territories of the U.S. British Islands, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. According to Pew, which cited census data, “more than half of Americans (54%) live in a state where both recreational and medical marijuana are legal, and 74% live in a state where it’s legal either for both purposes or medical use only.” 

“About eight-in-ten Americans (79%) live in a county with at least one cannabis dispensary, according to the February analysis. There are nearly 15,000 marijuana dispensaries nationwide, and 76% are in states (including D.C.) where recreational use is legal. Another 23% are in medical marijuana-only states, and 1% are in states that have made legal allowances for low-percentage THC or CBD-only products,” Pew explained. “The states with the largest number of dispensaries include California, Oklahoma, Florida, Colorado and Michigan.”

Pew also noted that Americans’ attitudes toward marijuana use have shifted dramatically since 2012, when Colorado and Washington became the first two states to legalize recreational pot use.

“Around nine-in-ten Americans say marijuana should be legal for medical or recreational use, according to a January 2024 Pew Research Center survey. An overwhelming majority of U.S. adults (88%) say either that marijuana should be legal for medical use only (32%) or that it should be legal for medical and recreational use (57%). Just 11% say the drug should not be legal in any form. These views have held relatively steady over the past five years,” Pew explained.

The wave of legalization has, apparently, had an effect on college admissions. 

According to the study published in Contemporary Economic Policy, the increase in applications “does not appear to come solely from low-ability students as both first and third quartiles of admitted student composite SAT scores to the largest three public schools do not decrease.”

“Rather, they both increase by almost 3.8% though these estimates are not statistically significant. Robust difference-in-difference and event study models support the signs and magnitudes of these gains and show they diminish over time,” the authors of the study wrote. 

The outlet PsyPost, which published analysis of the college applications study by one of the researchers, reported that in “the year that a particular state legalized recreational marijuana, the number of applications for that state’s colleges grew by about 5.5% more than colleges in states that did not legalize.” 

“This means that colleges in legal-marijuana states received a temporary boost in applications. We didn’t detect any increase beyond the initial spike. Our results control for school quality, tuition prices and labor market conditions that may affect student application decisions,” the researcher wrote. 

“As researchers continue to assess the risks and rewards of recreational marijuana, our results show that institutions of higher learning benefit when their home states allow their citizens to get high. One benefit is that schools had a larger and higher-achieving applicant pool to choose from. This in turn creates the potential to improve a school’s academic profile,” wrote the author, Christopher Blake.

“Our results fit into a larger body of research analyzing what affects a student’s application choices. We found that, similar to how schools see a spike in applications and SAT scores when those schools have winning sports teams, schools see spikes when they are located in states that legalize marijuana. While our data cannot prove it explicitly, this suggests that students do factor local policies into their college choice, a key result of interest for scholars and policymakers alike.”

But Blake also acknowledged some limitations to the research.

“Our data cannot pinpoint why freshmen who are often coming straight out of high school – and thus not of legal age (21) to buy recreational marijuana – might base their application decisions on recreational marijuana’s availability,” he wrote. “It could be the case that legal sales create a perception for prospective applicants that underage consumption is less risky. It could be simply because widespread news coverage made certain states seem more popular. Or it could be because more permissive public policies in one area, such as marijuana laws, might suggest more attractive and liberalized policies in other areas important to students, such as abortion. It’s hard to say without talking directly to students themselves.”

He added, “We also don’t know how much of the application boosts that occur after legalization are being driven by out-of-state students. For example, did legalization in Colorado cause students from other states to apply to Colorado schools in higher numbers? Alternatively, in-state students may have elected to apply to even more Colorado schools than they would have in the absence of recreational marijuana as a way to stay in their home state.”

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The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)—the organization that administers intercollegiate athletics in the U.S.—is making drastic changes to its drug policy for cannabis.

Changes were announced at the 2024 NCAA Convention that took place on Jan. 10-13, in Phoenix, Arizona. NCAA Division I proposed ending the practice of drug testing athletes for cannabinoids. The NCAA released a news release on Jan. 10, announcing that Division I is proposing removing cannabis from its drug-testing policy and will be voting on implementing the change shortly.

The White Mountain Independent reports that during the NCAA Convention on Jan. 11, a group of panelists discussed the recent cannabinoid drug testing policy updates and what needs to be done in order to incorporate those changes. NCAA Division I leaders decided cannabis is not in fact a performance-enhancing drug and that the organization’s drug testing policy should focus on other drugs instead.

“Cannabis is not a performance-enhancing drug, and we determined that the drug testing conducted at NCAA championships should focus on substances that impact competitive outcomes,” said Pat Chun, athletics director at Washington State and chair of the Strategic Vision and Planning Committee. “To be clear, this does not mean that NCAA members condone or promote use of cannabinoids. However, rather than focus on testing and subsequently penalizing student-athletes who use cannabis, NCAA efforts should focus on a harm reduction strategy, similar to substances like alcohol.”

The three panelists are members of the Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports (CSMAS), which recommended in September 2023 that each NCAA division introduce and adopt legislation to remove cannabinoids from the association’s banned list.

In order for cannabis to be removed from the NCAA substance list, Divisions I, II, and III must introduce and adopt legislation.The CSMAS committee suggested that NCAA Divisions I, II, and III remove cannabinoids from the NCAA’s banned drug list. Beyond the obvious tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), this would also remove less common cannabinoids, including cannabidiol (CBD), cannabigerol (CBG), and cannabinol (CBN).

Division I programs offer the highest level of competition between the NCAA’s three divisions and is the hardest division to get into and compete in.

The recommendation dates back to a December 2022 Summit on Cannabinoids in College Athletics, which concluded that “the consensus opinion that cannabis is not a performance-enhancing drug and that a harm reduction approach to cannabis is best implemented at the school level,” the NCAA wrote in a June 16, 2023 news release.

In February 2022, CSMAS slowly recognized the need for change, raising the THC testing threshold from 35 to 150 nanograms per milliliter and proposing a new penalty structure that incorporated treatment and education plans.

“One of the things we know about college students specifically is that treatment and education strategies work better than penalties,” CSMAS member Nadine Mastroleo, an associate professor in the department of psychology and faculty athletics representative at New York’s Binghamton University. “The last piece of this is really testing within a campus or at the local level. That is the best approach to using and finding individuals who actually might have a problem and could really use some support to reduce their use and to recover from whatever problems they may be having from that.”

According to a 2023 NCAA Student-Athlete Health and Wellness Study, 43% of college athletes are using marijuana in states where it is legal for recreational and medical use.

“Harm-reduction interventions, meaning meeting individuals where they are, are likely to be more effective in reducing cannabis-related health consequences than abstinence-only approaches,” said CSMAS member Deena Casiero, the senior associate athletics director for sports medicine and the head team physician at the University of Connecticut. “We know that randomly testing small groups of individuals at championships is not likely going to be as effective a deterrent as educating athletes about what this substance is actually doing to their bodies.

She continued, “How is this affecting your injury risk? How is this affecting your recovery? How is this affecting your performance? How is it affecting your sleep, your mental health? Pushing those agendas are going to be way more effective than randomly testing a group of individuals and then punishing them when they test positive.”

“So for those of you that will be getting emails from your student-athletes’ parents, we will hopefully be offering the information to you to help with that conversation,” Mastroleo said. “What we’re going to create ideally will be a really good toolkit of opportunities to really help with dispelling myths and also letting them know that we are out there for the athletes. Will we help everybody walk away from it? No, but I mean, how many of us can actually make everybody happy?”

A vote is scheduled to formally implement the drug testing policy change for Division I colleges is expected in June.

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The California Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) granted $19,942,918 to 16 academic institutions with plans to research cannabis on April 26. The grants will be dedicated to research initiatives exploring the effectiveness of cannabis on “mental health of young people, novel cannabinoids like Delta-8 and Delta-10 THC, and a first-of-its kind study of California’s legacy cannabis genetics, intended to preserve the history, value, and diversity of the communities that steward them,” a press release stated.

According to DCC chief deputy director Rasha Salama, the goal is to have these particular initiatives lead the way in cannabis studies. “It is the Department’s aspiration that these studies will advance the body of scientific research, further our understanding of cannabis, and aid to the continued development and refinement of the legal framework,” said Salama. “These studies will provide valuable insights on topics of interest to California’s consumers, businesses, and policy makers and the Department looks forward to sharing them once they are completed.”

Grants were awarded to institutions in six categories, including cannabis potency, medicinal use of cannabis, health of the cannabis industry, monopolies and unfair competition, California legacy genetics and genetic sequencing, and “other” topics. A total of 98 proposals were considered, and 16 were chosen from that pool based on “strong scientific methodology, their ability to provide useful information for policymaking, their advancement of public understanding of cannabis, and their potential to generate foundational research that will support exponential future knowledge.”

The institution that received the highest grant amount of funds was Cal Poly Humboldt with $2,699,178, which will be sued to tackle the topic of “Legacy Cannabis Genetics: People and Their Plants, a Community-Driven Study.” 

According to a press release, a nonprofit organization called Origins Council and the Cannabis Equity Policy Council is partnering with the Cal Poly Humboldt to work on the initiative. “This research seeks to empower and protect California’s legacy cultivation communities who have overcome great adversity to innovate and steward one of the most important collections of cannabis genetic resources in the world,” stated Origins Council executive director Genine Coleman.

Additionally, the University of California, Irvine and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) received $2 million each, and both will be conducting cannabis potency studies.

UCLA-based studies secured six grants, and University of California, Berkeley (UCB) received grants for three. Other institutions included University of California, San Francisco, University of California, Davis, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and Cal Poly Humboldt.

One particular collaboration between UC Irvine and UCLA will conduct the “first double-blind, placebo-controlled, federally compliant, drug-administration study evaluating the intoxicating effects of inhaled cannabis plant compared to inhaled concentrates. It is expected [to] establish a clinically significant threshold to define high and low THC concentrations.”

In February, the DCC also announced a new grant program offering $20 million to help support and expand the state’s cannabis industry. “Expanding access to California’s retail cannabis market is an important step towards protecting consumer safety and supporting a balanced market,” said DCC director Nicole Elliott. “The retail access grant program ultimately seeks to encourage legal retail operations in areas where existing consumers do not have convenient access to regulated cannabis.” The grant application window ends on April 28, and $10 million of the grant funds will be awarded by June 20. After that, an additional $10 million will be “available to previous awardees as they issue licenses.”

The DCC released a statement in early March regarding the enforcement statistics from the past two years. According to the agency’s report, the DCC led 61 search warrant operations in 2021, but conducted 155 in 2022. In 2021, the DCC seized more than 41,726 pounds of cannabis (approximately $77,772,936 in value), but that number increased to 144,254 pounds in 2022 (estimated to be more than $243,017,836 in value).

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Cannabis is inextricable from American society. These are the top colleges and universities offering weed education courses, degrees, and certifications.

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Cannabis research continues to grow in higher education. Learn about the top 25 cannabis research colleges and their cannabis programs.

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Start low. Go slow. Don’t crossfade.

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