A new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report breaks down federal data on cannabis use among thousands of U.S. adults, finding that while smoking marijuana remains the most common way to consume it, methods such as eating, vaping and dabbing are growing in popularity.
The brief agency report, published late last week, looks at data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, an annual nationwide telephone survey of people 18 and older. Specifically, it unpacks responses from a “optional marijuana module” that was included in the 2022 survey.
The module included additional questions for past-month cannabis users that asked about methods of use.
Notably, the use of that module was the first time since 2016 that the survey allowed for the selection of multiple methods of use. From 2017 through 2021, marijuana modules permitted only a single method of use.
Comparing 2022 results to those in 2016 reveals that “the prevalences of eating and vaping marijuana were each higher in 2022,” authors wrote, “as was the prevalence of reporting multiple routes of use.”
Monitoring trends like those, they added, “is important because each route of use is associated with unique health risks. For example, the wider availability of edibles has been associated with increased accidental pediatric ingestion.”
Overall in 2022, 15.3 percent of adults reported current marijuana use, while 7.9 percent reported daily use. Among users, most (79.4 percent) reported smoking, followed by eating (41.6 percent), vaping (30.3 percent) and dabbing (14.6 percent).
About half of all adults who used marijuana (46.7 percent) reported multiple methods of use—most typically smoking and eating or smoking and vaping.
Rates of both vaping and dabbing—as well as cannabis use in general—were higher in young adults than the general adult population.
“Among adults aged 18–24 and 25–34 years,” the report says, “approximately one in four reported current marijuana use, and approximately one in eight reported daily use.”
Vaping and dabbing were also most common in the 18–24 age range, as well as among non-Hispanic Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander respondents.
Both current and daily marijuana use were also more common in 2022 among males, non-Hispanic multiracial adults, American Indians or Alaska Natives and people whose highest level of education was a high-school degree or lower, the CDC report says.
The survey’s 2022 marijuana module was used in 22 U.S. states and two territories, while the 2016 module covered just 12 states. That difference may complicate some comparisons, the agency noted.
Additionally, authors wrote, “questions about routes of use had not been consistently asked across previous BRFSS survey years or asked consistently across the same jurisdictions every survey year. Therefore, it is not possible to examine trends in routes of use, and comparisons of results to those obtained in previous years might reflect changes in sampling rather than only changes in prevalence.”
Data is also self-reported, which “might lead to underestimation of prevalence estimates if respondents were influenced by social desirability,” the paper says.
As for what the findings mean for public health, authors—a four person team from CDC’s Division of Overdose Prevention—said education is paramount.
“Given the prevalence of cannabis smoking, eating, vaping, and dabbing,” they wrote, “public health–related messaging specific to these routes of use can help guide persons about potential risks.”
“Messaging can focus on the risks related to each of these routes of use,” they added, “such as exposure to contaminants or adulterants with vaping, or exposure to high concentrations of THC from ingestion, vaping, and dabbing.”
While the 2022 data show comparatively high use among young adults, a separate CDC report in 2024 found a decline in teen use over the past decade, as dozens of states moved to legalize cannabis.
As of 2023, for example, 17 percent of high-school students reported using marijuana within the past month. In 2013, that figure was 23 percent.
Though youth use rates ticked up and down by a few percentage points from survey to survey over the 10-year timespan covered by that CDC report, the overall trend was that past-month use among high-school students declined since 2013.
Notably, male students showed a more marked drop in marijuana use over the past decade, with rates falling from 25 percent in 2013 to 15 percent in 2023. Among female students over the same time period, rates decreased from 22 percent to 19 percent.
Another earlier analysis from CDC found that rates of current and lifetime cannabis use among high school students have continued to drop amid the legalization movement.
Another recent federal report, published by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), found that consumption among minors—defined as people 12 to 20 years of age—had fallen slightly in the past year. Despite methodological changes that make comparisons over time difficult, it also suggests that youth use has fallen significantly in the past decade.
A separate poll recently found that that more Americans smoke marijuana on a daily basis than drink alcohol every day—and that alcohol drinkers are more likely to say they would benefit from limiting their use than cannabis consumers are.
U.S. adults who drink alcohol are nearly three times as likely to say they’d be better off reducing their intake of the drug compared to marijuana consumers who said they’d benefit from using their preferred substance less often, the survey found. Further, it found that while lifetime and monthly alcohol drinking among adults was far more common than cannabis use, daily marijuana consumption was slightly more popular than daily drinking.
An earlier report published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs that found that secondhand harm caused by marijuana use is far less prevalent than that of alcohol, with respondents reporting secondhand harm from drinking at nearly six times the rate they did for cannabis.
Yet another 2022 study from Michigan State University researchers, published in the journal PLOS One, found that “cannabis retail sales might be followed by the increased occurrence of cannabis onsets for older adults” in legal states, “but not for underage persons who cannot buy cannabis products in a retail outlet.”
The trends were observed despite adult use of marijuana and certain psychedelics reaching “historic highs” in 2022, according to separate data.
Photo courtesy of Mike Latimer.
A new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report breaks down federal data on cannabis use among thousands of U.S. adults, finding that while smoking marijuana remains the most common way to consume it, methods such as eating, vaping and dabbing are growing in popularity. The brief agency report, published late last week, looks Read More
