Daily marijuana use surpasses alcohol consumption among Americans, study finds

For the first time in three decades, more Americans report daily or near-daily use of marijuana than alcohol, according to a new study published in the journal Addiction. The analysis, conducted by Jonathan Caulkins, a drug policy researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, utilized data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, encompassing over 1.6 million participants across nearly 30 surveys from 1979 to 2022. In 2022, approximately 17.7 million Americans reported using marijuana daily or nearly daily, surpassing the 14.7 million who reported consuming alcohol at similar frequencies. This marks a significant shift from 1992, when fewer than 1 million people used marijuana daily compared to 8.9 million daily alcohol drinkers. Caulkins and Keith Humphries, a Stanford University professor, wrote in the& Washington Monthly& about the analysis, “Through the mid-1990s, only about one-in-six or one-in-eight of those users consumed the drug daily or near daily, similar to alcohol’s roughly one-in-ten. Now, more than 40 percent of marijuana users consume daily or near daily.”& The study highlights a notable upward trend in marijuana use, coinciding with the liberalization of cannabis policies across the United States. “Trends in cannabis use have declined during periods of greater restriction and increased during...