Cannabis Use Overtakes Alcohol Use in the USA

Daily and regular cannabis use is now more typical than comparable levels of drinking in the US, according to a new analysis of national survey data.
 
Alcohol may still be more widely used, but 2022 was the first year that the level of cannabis use overtook drinking, said the study’s author, Jonathan Caulkins, a cannabis policy researcher at Carnegie Mellon University.

“A good 40% of current cannabis users are using it daily or near daily, a pattern that is more associated with tobacco use than typical alcohol use.” Jonathan Caulkins, study author and cannabis policy researcher, Carnegie Mellon University.
 
In 2022, an estimated 17.7 million people used cannabis daily or almost-daily. This is in comparison to 14.7 million daily or almost-daily drinkers. 

The research is based on data from the last 4 years and comes from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
 
This is a highly regarded authority on tobacco, alcohol and drug use in the United States. This new trend reflects recent shifts in public policy. Many states now permit medical or recreational cannabis, though it remains prohibited at a federal level.
 
Recently the Department of Justice began the official process to reclassify cannabis as being classified as a less harmful drug than the majority of prescription painkillers and addictive stimulants, placing it as a Schedule 3 substance. This is the beginning of the end of decades of policy that treated cannabis as containing no adequate medical use.
 
Schedule 3 drugs are those classified as having “a potential for abuse less than the drugs or other substances” in Schedule 1 and 2.

Until now cannabis has been classified under Schedule 1 since the inception of the federal government’s modern drug regulation system back in the 1970s. It has been prohibited under federal law since the Marijuana Tax Act virtually criminalised its’ cultivation back in the 1930s.
 
However, the latest data does have some worried as it is believed that high-frequency users have more chance of becoming addicted to cannabis.  
 
The number of daily cannabis users increasing may imply that a higher number of people are at risk of addiction or developing problems like cannabis-associated psychosis. This is defined as a severe condition where a person loses touch with reality.

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