A new study by a Carnegie Mellon University researcher assessed cannabis use in the United States between 1979 and 2022 and found that uAn increasing proportion of cannabis users report daily or near-daily use and their numbers now surpass those of alcohol drinkers.
The study concludes that long-term trends in cannabis use parallel corresponding changes in policy over the same period.
“The data come from surveys, but the huge changes in rates of self-reported cannabis use, particularly daily or near-daily use, suggest that the changes in actual use have been considerable,” said Jonathan P. Caulkins, professor of operations and public policy research at Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz School of Information Systems and Public Policy, who conducted the study. “It is surprising that frequent cannabis use is now more common than frequent alcohol use.”
Alcohol is still consumed by more people, but 2022 was the first time that heavy marijuana use surpassed highly frequent alcohol use, notes Jonathan Caulkins, a cannabis policy researcher at Carnegie Mellon University and author of the study.
Although previous research has compared cannabis and alcohol-related outcomes before and after state-level policy changes with changes during the same period in states without policy changes, This study examined long-term trends for the United States as a whole. Caulkins looked at days of drinking, not just prevalence, and made comparisons with alcohol, but did not attempt to identify causal effects.
“A good 40% of current cannabis users consume it daily or almost daily.”a pattern that is more associated with tobacco use than with typical alcohol consumption,” Caulkins said.
In 2022, an estimated 17.7 million people used marijuana daily or almost daily, compared to 14.7 million people who used alcohol daily or almost daily, according to the study. From 1992 to 2022, the per capita rate of daily or near-daily marijuana use reported by consumers increased 15-fold.
According to the study’s findings, although many more people drink than use cannabis, frequent alcohol consumption is less common. In 2022, the average drinker reported drinking between 4 and 5 days during the previous month, compared to having used cannabis between 15 and 16 days during the previous month.
“These trends reflect changes in policies, with declines during periods of greater restriction and growth during periods of policy liberalization.“Caulkins explained. He noted that this does not mean that policy drove changes in usage; both could have been manifestations of changes in underlying culture and attitudes. “But whichever direction the causal arrows point, cannabis use now appears to be on a fundamentally different scale than it was before legalization.”
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