An estimated 61.9 million Americans aged 12 and older used marijuana at least once in the past year as of 2023, based on federal survey data. That number has climbed steadily over the past two decades, driven by legalization, shifting cultural attitudes, and a dramatic rise in daily use. To put the scale in perspective, more Americans now use cannabis daily than drink alcohol daily.
Daily Use Now Exceeds Daily Drinking
The most striking trend in marijuana use isn’t just that more people are trying it. It’s how often they’re using it. In 2022, 17.7 million Americans reported daily or near-daily cannabis use, compared to 14.7 million daily or near-daily alcohol users. That’s a historic reversal: back in 1992, daily alcohol users outnumbered daily cannabis users by a factor of ten (8.9 million versus 0.9 million).
Among people who used marijuana in the past month, 42% reported daily or near-daily use, and 28% reported using every single day. For comparison, only about 11% of past-month alcohol drinkers reported daily or near-daily consumption. In other words, people who use marijuana are far more likely to use it frequently than people who drink are to drink frequently.
Who Uses Marijuana
Men use marijuana at roughly twice the rate of women. Throughout much of the 2000s, past-year use held steady at about 13% of adult men and 7% of adult women. Starting around 2007, both groups saw increases, but men’s rates climbed faster, widening the gender gap. Between 2002 and 2014, an estimated 6 million additional men and 4 million additional women began using marijuana.
Income plays a role too. Between 2007 and 2014, marijuana use among men in households earning less than $20,000 a year jumped by about 6 percentage points, compared to only 2 percentage points among women in the same income bracket.
Age-wise, young adults between 18 and 25 still have the highest rates of use, but the fastest-growing group is older Americans. About 18.5% of middle-aged adults now report past-year cannabis use. Among adults 65 and older, the figure is 5.9%, which may sound modest but represents a sharp increase from near-zero rates just a decade or two ago. Researchers note these numbers are higher than previously reported in earlier national-level studies.
How Legalization Changes the Numbers
States where recreational marijuana is legal see meaningfully higher use rates than states where it remains illegal. A 2018 comparison found that 25% of adults in legal states used cannabis at least monthly, compared to about 17% in states without legal recreational sales. Daily use followed the same pattern: 11.3% in legal states versus 7.4% in states where recreational use was prohibited.
This doesn’t necessarily mean legalization causes all of that extra use. States that passed legalization early tended to have higher baseline rates and more favorable public attitudes toward cannabis. But the gap is consistent and significant across every frequency level, from occasional to daily.
How People Use It
Smoking remains by far the dominant method. Among current users in a 12-state survey, 90% smoked marijuana through joints, blunts, bongs, or bowls. About 58% smoked exclusively, with no other consumption method.
Edibles and vaping are common secondary methods but rarely the only one. Roughly 25% of users reported eating cannabis products, though only 4.5% used edibles exclusively. About 19% vaped marijuana, but just 2% vaped without also smoking. A third of users reported mixing multiple methods. Dabbing, which involves vaporizing highly concentrated cannabis extracts, was the least common at 14.5% of users, and almost nobody (0.4%) dabbed exclusively.
Marijuana in the Workplace
Despite rising use, workplace drug tests still catch a relatively small share of employees. In 2024, 4.5% of general workforce urine tests came back positive for THC, making marijuana the most commonly detected substance. That rate has held steady year over year, even as more states legalize.
For federally mandated safety-sensitive positions like truck drivers, pilots, and transit operators, the positivity rate was much lower at 0.87%. Across the combined workforce, 2.9% of tests detected THC. These numbers likely undercount actual use, since many workers abstain or use detox strategies specifically to pass scheduled tests, and a growing number of employers have dropped marijuana from their testing panels entirely.