The students have spoken, and they have voiced their support for pot smoking over cigarette smoking — the first time since the National Institute of Drug Abuse funded “Monitoring the Future” survey began in 1975.

According to the survey, 6 percent of 12th graders used marijuana every day, compared to 5.5 percent of seniors who reported smoking cigarettes daily. The percentage of students who use marijuana every day remained about the same compared to last year, while the rate of students smoking cigarettes dropped from 6.7 percent in 2014.

Perceptions of pot also changed among the students — fewer students this year think it’s dangerous compared to last year. About 32 percent of seniors thought regular marijuana use could have harmful effects, while 36 percent felt that way last year.

“The sense that marijuana has medicinal purposes and that doctors are prescribing it creates a sense that this drug cannot be so harmful,” Dr. Nora D Volkow, director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health, told Time.

Each year, fewer and fewer students perceive marijuana as dangerous, though the number of daily marijuana smokers has remained pretty stable, hovering around 6 percent since 2012. Marijuana overtaking cigarettes in popularity is mainly due to the significant drop in cigarette smoking rates in high schoolers over the past few years. For example, in 10th graders, the daily smoking rate has dropped 55 percent since 2010.

Dr. Volkow told The Atlantic that the reduction in smoking can be attributed to “prevention campaigns targeting adolescents specifically.”

“There is another factor,” she added. “Kids who used cigarettes now use other products.”

Newer types of nicotine carriers like e-cigarettes are as popular with students this year as the year before, but the findings suggest students aren’t always sure what it is they’re inhaling. Most of the teens using e-cigarettes claimed they were inhaling only flavors as opposed to nicotine, but many didn’t know what they were inhaling. Twenty percent said that last time they smoked an e-cigarette, they were inhaling nicotine. Researchers are still uncertain about the effects of e-cigarettes on the body, and Volkow said there is an ongoing debate over whether inhaling just flavoring is safe.

“There’s been evidence that some of these e-cigarette devices release chemicals that are toxic to the body,” she said. “Since there is no control over manufacturing products, the quality of these products vary. I think this is an area that requires investigation to actually assess the potential harmful effects.”

Some purely good news did come from the survey, which showed that teens are doing less of almost every drug other than marijuana. In each grade 8-12, the survey noted a decline in the use of alcohol, prescription opioids, synthetic marijuana and heroin, the last of which hit a record low for eighth graders (0.3 percent) and 10th and 12th graders (0.5 percent). The news about opioids was particularly welcome — national rates of opioid use have gone up in adults, and researchers had been worried the same trend might occur in teens.

Volkow said she was heartened by the declines in cigarette use and drinking, but the growing acceptance of marijuana among teens concerned her. Preliminary studies showed changes in brain structure among adolescents who use pot, and Volkow, along with other scientists, worries that since teens’ brains are not yet fully formed, they may be disrupting the wiring process between neurons by flooding their systems with cannaboids from marijuana.