For the first time, more U.S. high school seniors are smoking marijuana than tobacco, a new survey shows.

Daily marijuana use remained relatively stable at 6 percent, while those seniors who said they smoked cigarettes every day dropped from 6.7 percent in 2014 to 5.5 percent, the researchers found.

The same trend has been seen on college campuses, with a recent report showing that more college students (6 percent) now smoke a joint each day than light up a cigarette (5 percent).

“While we have seen no increase in marijuana use, we continue to see deterioration in the perceived riskiness of marijuana,” said Dr. Wilson Compton, deputy director at the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). “That often has been a predictor of greater use of marijuana in future years.”

NIDA funded the survey, which was conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan.

Dr. Scott Krakower, assistant unit chief of psychiatry at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, N.Y., said the perception that marijuana isn’t harmful is due to several factors.

These include teens seeing it being used to treat certain medical conditions and being legalized around the country. “With the drug being legalized, parents may see it as being less harmful as well,” he said. “We are definitely going to see increased marijuana use.”

Read the article “Pot Tops Cigarettes among High School Seniors” on chicagotribune.com.