Study Finds 1 in 4 Adults in America Used Cannabis in Past Year

Quite a few adults in the United States have consumed marijuana in the past year. This is according to a new study published in the journal BMJ Open and epublished by the U.S. National Institute of Health. The study is titled Retrospective cross-sectional analysis of the changes in marijuana use in the USA, 2005-2018.

According to the study, almost one our of every four adults who live in the United States say that they have consumed marijuana in the past year. For the study researchers from Harvard Medical School and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center examined marijuana use from a nationally representative sample of over 35,000 US adults. They found that “Overall, 53.5 percent of the US adult population reported ever using marijuana between 2005 and 2018. The prevalence of lifetime marijuana use, and first use before the age of 18, remained stable between 2005 and 2018. Overall 22.6 percent of US adults reported using marijuana within the last year.”

The full abstract can be found below:

Objectives Understanding trends of marijuana use in the USA throughout a period of particularly high adoption of marijuana-legalisation, and understanding demographics most at risk of use, is important in evolving healthcare policy and intervention. This study analyses the demographic-specific changes in the prevalence of marijuana use in the USA between 2005 and 2018.