Question: Reporting on a study of drinking and drug use among college students in the United States, a Newsweek reporter wrote: Why should college students be so impervious to the lesson of the morning after? Efforts to discourage them from using drugs actually did work. The proportion of college students who smoked marijuana at least once in 30 days went from one in three in 1980 to one in seven last year [1993]; cocaine users dropped from 7 percent to 0.7 percent over the same period. (19 December 1994, p. 72)
a. What was the relative risk of cocaine use for college students in 1980 compared with college students in 1993? Write your answer as a statement that could be understood by someone who does not know anything about statistics.
b. Are the figures given for marijuana use (for example, "one in three") presented as proportions or as odds? Whichever they are, rewrite them as the other.
c. Do you agree with the statement that "efforts to discourage them from using drugs actually did work"? Explain your reasoning.