Last month's highly publicized drug bust at Texas Christian University, in Fort Worth, led to the arrest of 15 current students - four who played on the school's football team - and four former students. Although the six-month sting operation involving undercover police officers posing as buyers netted students who sold a variety of drugs, most got busted for peddling marijuana. The arrests, and a recent report showing a slight increase in marijuana use among college athletes, who get tested regularly, raise questions about young adults' attitudes toward the drug.

Although it remains an illegal substance, both college students and experts who study drug use among young adults say marijuana is losing its stigma. Even televangelist Pat Robertson recently called for its decriminalization. Many young people now view the drug as more similar to alcohol than hard drugs, like cocaine or heroin, and are using it accordingly.

"Just from me talking to a lot of people, they say 'do you do drugs or pot?' as if it's a separate category," said SuengMon Olson, a sophomore at Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C. "It's not considered as hard as other street drugs or other prescription drugs."

Olson, who used to smoke pot, said other users he knew just didn't think marijuana was as dangerous as other drugs, or even alcohol. But when one of his friends, a student at Purdue University, got caught with the drug and arrested, Olson realized he had to give it up. Despite claims that marijuana is not addicting, Olson's friend couldn't seem to stop. He went right back to smoking after his arrest, a decision Olson realized was foolish.

The perception that marijuana is safe or relatively harmless is responsible for much of the shift in attitude toward the drug, said Amy Dominguez, an associate professor at Regent University, in Virginia Beach, Va., who has a doctorate in clinical psychology and has written about strategies to combat drug and alcohol use on college campuses.

"Research has shown that young people today consider alcohol and marijuana less risky than other substances," she said. "They have more apathy towards those two and the potential dangers those hold."

One of the most significant factors in the changing perception of marijuana is the debate in several states over legalizing its use for medicinal purposes, Dominguez said. Those debates have helped convince many people that marijuana should be legal, contributing to the message that it isn't wrong, Dominguez said: "They have more of a mindset that maybe the legality of marijuana should be in question. They have information from multiple sources, not just home, class or church. They are coming at this armed with information and are very informed."

Samantha Whitlock, a senior nursing student at Bob Jones said all of the debates about the benefits of marijuana, even references to it as a medicine, help make it seem innocuous.

"I don't believe most people say that about other hard drugs," she said.

Bryan Carrier, the assistant dean of students at Union University, a Christian college in Jackson, Tenn., says he rarely deals with drug-related disciplinary cases. But he does agree with Dominguez about young adults' increasing acceptance of marijuana and the role the debate over legalization has played.

"I've worked at institutions where one-third or more of the students reported having used marijuana," he said. "It's obtainable."

And as more students use the drug, the stereotypes about those who do are disappearing.

"Marijuana is more common and it's more on the level on cigarettes and alcohol," said Bill Eisaman, a dormitory counselor at Bob Jones who attended a public high school. "The three things just went together. Even the people who were commonly considered good and decent kids did marijuana as opposed to harder drugs."

And those who weren't doing it probably assumed everyone else was.

Misconceptions about the prevalence of drug use on college campuses are a self-fulfilling prophecy, Dominguez said. Many students who do not drink or use drugs believe alcohol or drug use is extremely common among their fellow students, Dominguez said. Those who do drink and use drugs perceive their peers to have similar habits. Because of their perceptions, both groups adjust their behavior to drink and use drugs with greater frequency, she said.

According to the 2009 CORE Survey, a study of alcohol and drug use among college students, 30 percent of respondents reported using marijuana during the previous year, and 17 percent said they used it in the previous 30 days. Only 12 percent reported using other illegal drugs during the previous year. The survey also showed that fewer students care about alcohol or drug use than about campus vandalism or harassment for religion, gender or race.

But usage statistics are still lower than students think they are. Slightly more than 53 percent of survey respondents said they believed the average college student uses some form of illegal drug at least once a week.

Although the prevalence of marijuana and the debates over its legalization may contribute to more students doing it, Bob Jones junior Kyle Fetterolf chalks any increase in use to one age-old reason - justification.

"One thing that I've noticed is that if you do drugs, you typically don't think it's bad for you," he said. "You try to justify it. If you talk to pretty much anybody who does weed, they'll try to argue against anything that says it's bad for you."