As legalization expands across the United States and people are becoming more open about cannabis use, a new study has found cannabis use rates are up across the country, especially in states where it has been legalized for recreational use.
Researchers from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and The City University of New York found that while cannabis use is up across the country, states with legal recreational cannabis see substantially higher daily use relative to states where cannabis remains illegal. The study also found the rates of cannabis use are higher among Americans 12 or older who smoke cigarettes and who reside in legal recreational use states. The researchers looked at data from the 2004-2017 National Survey of Drug Use and Health, a representative survey of U.S individuals ages 12 or older.
“Based upon over a decade of data, cannabis use was markedly more prevalent in states where recreational use is legal for adults, relative to states where it was not in 2017. Yet, the increases in cannabis use during this time period were as fast, or faster, in states where cannabis use is prohibited by law, relative to states that had legalized for recreational use by 2017,” said Renee Goodwin, PhD, adjunct associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School and professor of epidemiology at CUNY, and lead author of the study. “It remains to be seen how increased lawful access and growing use of cannabis among adults in all states—almost regardless of legal status—will impact the adolescent population. Recent trends, however, outline a potential explosion in both of-age and underage use.”
In 2017, one in three daily cigarette smokers claimed cannabis use within the past month and almost one in five reported daily cannabis use in legal recreational use states, compared to non-smokers, with one in ten reporting cannabis use and three percent reporting daily cannabis use.
Among adolescents aged 12-17, 73 percent reported using cannabis in the past month with 30 percent reporting daily cannabis use. Adolescents who do not smoke cigarettes had only five percent of survey respondents reporting cannabis use within the past month and only one percent reporting daily cannabis use. A British study recently found teens were three times more likely to develop an addiction to cannabis, and another study reported teen cannabis use has risen 20 percent as more states continue to legalize cannabis for recreational use.
“We found that teenagers are three and a half times more likely to have severe cannabis use disorder, which is essentially cannabis addiction,” said lead researcher Will Lawn, a lecturer in addiction psychology with King’s College London. “That’s a very important harm which teenagers should be informed of.”
A 2018 study concluded daily cannabis use was more likely to be linked to cigarette smokers, with cannabis use rising across the board for current, former and never smokers and particularly rapid increases among the youth and female cigarette smoking population. Daily and nondaily cigarette smokers were significantly more likely to use cannabis daily than nonsmokers. Another survey by Gallup also found cannabis consumption and cigarette are almost equally common practices, with 15 percent of respondents saying they smoked cigarettes and 12 percent of respondents saying they consumed cannabis, with the percentage of those identifying as smokers coming it at an all-time low in the past 75 years.
Australia has also seen a shift in the attitudes surrounding cannabis use, with a study from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare that analyzed data from Australia’s 2019 National Drug Strategy Household Survey and found, for the first time, more people support regular cannabis use over regular tobacco use. The study also found as more are beginning to accept cannabis, Australians are in favor of greater penalties against tobacco use and support stricter enforcement on supplying minors with tobacco products.
