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A recent study tracking the past 40 years of marijuana and alcohol use has revealed a seismic shift in the United States and for the first time in American history, daily marijuana use is now more popular than daily alcohol consumption.
The study used self-reported data to the US National Survey on Drug Use and Health. It looked at responses from 1,641,041 participants spanning 1979 to 2022. And the findings were published this week in the Journal Addiction published by the Society for the Study of Addiction.
What it found was daily cannabis use in the United States was plummeting for years and bottomed out in 1992. It since been on the rise and is now more prevalent than daily alcohol consumption amongst Americans.
In 2022, ~17.7 million Americans self-reported using marijuana daily (up from less than 1M in 1992). That same year, ~14.7 million Americans reported drinking alcohol daily (up from 9M in 1992).
Of all the people surveyed in 2022 who said they’d used marijuana at least once in the past month, 42% said they use it daily. Conversely, just 11% of alcohol drinkers reported using it daily.
The survey results published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that 61.9 million Americans reported having used marijuana in the past year, 137.4 million Americans reported drinking alcohol at least once in the past year, and 50.9 million Americans reported using a tobacco product at least once in the past year.
So while the number of Americans who still dabble with booze on occasions is still over double the number of Americans who use marijuana on occasion, the number of daily marijuana users has surpassed daily drinkers for the first time in American history.
What does that mean? Well, that’s for the policy makers to determine. It was reported at the end of last month the DEA is on the verge of reclassifying marijuana as a Schedule III drug instead of Schedule I. So on the surface, it would seem policy makers are less concerned with the dangers of marijuana than they have been for the past 50+ years.