Daily Cannabis Users Surpassed Daily Alcohol Users in 2022 |
An article in the journal Addiction recently grabbed my attention.[i] In “Daily or near-daily cannabis and alcohol use by adults in the United States,” Jonathan Caulkins reported that 2022 marked the year daily, or near-daily (i.e., at least 20 days each month), cannabis users outnumbered daily, or near-daily, alcohol users for the first time. While the total number of Americans consuming alcohol is still greater than those using cannabis, heavy users of each tells a different story. An estimated 17.7 million Americans use cannabis every day, or nearly every day, while 14.7 million use alcohol at the same frequency. This raises the question of the degree to which this rate of heavy cannabis use might be problematic.
I spent nearly three decades reviewing the latest cannabis research every month to reach fact-based conclusions about cannabis rather than relying on mere opinion. Most people’s opinions rest on only a limited view of the world, including personal and family experience, a few hundred acquaintances, studies carried by popular media, and public policy positions staked out by their favored politicians. These sources of information lack the wider perspective achieved by scientific studies of whole populations and detailed laboratory research of brain structure and........