[Canniseur: I’m willing to bet that because of the lingering stigma of cannabis consumption, the actual percentage of adults who consume cannabis is quite a bit higher. So what is the U.S. waiting for? Legal cannabis does not increase crime, bring underage teens into the realm of consumption or do any of the negatives the naysayers have been using as talking points for decades. It’s time to eliminate cannabis from Schedule 1. It’s about time to do something.]
A new study found that almost one-in-four American adults (22.6%) say they’ve consumed marijuana within the past year.
The study’s researchers are affiliated with Harvard Medical School and Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, NORML reported. The study assessed cannabis use data from a national sample of over 35,000 adults.
“Overall 22.6 percent of US adults reported using marijuana within the last year,” the study says, and that “53.5 percent of the US adult population reported ever using marijuana between 2005 and 2018.”
Support across the U.S. has continually increased for marijuana legalization. A majority of the support comes from people under the age of 50.
Other studies have found that cannabis legalization doesn’t increase crime rates and that youth cannabis use doesn’t increase alongside medical and/or recreational cannabis legalization.