CV NEWS FEED // Marijuana use in the United States has skyrocketed in the past several decades, and now there are more people who use marijuana daily than people who drink alcohol daily, according to a new study.
Researcher Jonathan Caulkins compared daily alcohol and marijuana use based on surveys taken in 1979, 1992, 2008, and 2022. Caulkins published his findings on May 22.
In 1992, there were 10 times more people who drank alcohol daily or almost daily than people who used marijuana at the same rate. Approximately 8.9 million people drank regularly, compared to 0.9 million people who used marijuana regularly.
In 2022, 17.7 million people reported using marijuana daily or almost daily, compared to 14.7 million people who drank alcohol at the same rate.
“Far more people drink, but high-frequency drinking is less common,” wrote Caulkins in the Findings. “In 2022, the median drinker reported drinking on 4–5 days in the past month, versus 15–16 days in the past month for cannabis. In 2022, past-month cannabis consumers were almost four times as likely to report daily or near daily use (42.3% vs. 10.9%) and 7.4 times more likely to report daily use (28.2% vs. 3.8%).”
Caulkins noted that daily marijuana use increased during times “of policy liberalization,” when fewer restrictions on the drug’s usage were in place. Conversely, during periods where more restrictive marijuana policies were in place, there was a decrease in the number of people who used marijuana daily.
In a Washington Monthly article co-authored by Caulkins and Keith Humphrey about the study, they noted that THC levels in marijuana have also increased in recent years, meaning that regular users are consuming higher, more potent levels of the drug’s active intoxicant than daily users did in the 1990s.
“Today’s daily users average more than 1.5 grams of material that is 20-25 percent THC, which is more than 300 milligrams per day,” the authors wrote. “That is far more THC than is consumed in typical medical studies of its health effects.”
They continued, “This spike in marijuana usage and THC consumption might seem unimportant in an era when fentanyl and other synthetic drugs are killing over 80,000 Americans per year, but describing a drug as less dangerous than fentanyl is damning with faint praise.”
The authors also highlighted that overall, marijuana use is not good for one’s health.
“There are exceptions, of course, but on the whole, daily marijuana use is neither health-promoting nor performance-enhancing for the typical daily user,” they stated, later writing:
The biggest long-term medical health risk may concern serious and lifelong psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia.
They noted that marijuana use has also been shown to cause short-term memory damage, increased risk of cardiovascular disease, and cannabis-induced cyclical vomiting, among other issues.
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The article’s authors also noted that only 2% of teenagers 12 to 17 years old use marijuana daily or almost daily. The remaining percentage of Americans who use marijuana daily or almost daily are 18 years or older. In 2022, adults aged 35-49 consumed slightly more marijuana than the other age demographics.
While there are legal factors in play in the rates of marijuana use, the authors added that cultural and societal factors have an impact as well.
They encouraged parents, teachers, and pediatricians to educate themselves on “this new era of cannabis,” but added, “it isn’t just about the kids.”
“Thirty-something-year-olds who see a friend’s use getting the better of them need to speak up, too,” they concluded:
Cannabis isn’t fentanyl, but it isn’t lettuce, either. The vastly increased use of the drug is not all benign, and we may come to regret it if we fail to recognize and respond to these trends.
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