The use of cannabis and hallucinogens remained at “historically high levels” last year among adults aged 19 to 30 and 35 to 50, according to a new survey.
The survey found that 42 percent of adults aged 19 to 30 reported using cannabis in 2023 while 10 percent said they used it daily. Nearly one in three adults aged 35 to 50, 29 percent, reported using it last year.
Women aged 19 to 30 reported higher cannabis use than their male counterparts, according to The Monitoring the Future survey. Males aged 35 to 50, however, reported a higher use of cannabis than females.
Cannabis vaping also increased among younger adults last year, with 1 in 5 stating they’ve used it at least once.
Additionally, nicotine vaping remained high in 2023 among younger adults, with around a quarter, 25 percent, saying they’ve used it at least one time. Among those aged 35 to 50, nicotine vaping remained around the same as in 2022, with 7 percent saying they’ve done it at least once.
Meanwhile, the use of hallucinogens, like LSD, mescaline, peyote, shrooms or psilocybin, continued a five-year trend of increasing, both among younger adults, with 9 percent of respondents aged 19 to 30 saying they used hallucinogens, compared to 4 percent of those aged 35 to 50.
“We have seen that people at different stages of adulthood are trending toward use of drugs like cannabis and psychedelics and away from tobacco cigarettes,” Nora D. Volkow, M.D., director of NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse, which supported the survey, said in a statement. “These findings underscore the urgent need for rigorous research on the potential risks and benefits of cannabis and hallucinogens – especially as new products continue to emerge.”
Alcohol was still the most-used substance among adults, according to the survey. Approximately 84 percent of adults aged 19 to 30 reported using it last year, while daily drinking and binge drinking were reported by 4 percent and 27 percent of respondents, respectively.
“The data from 2023 did not show us many significant changes from the year before, but the power of surveys such as Monitoring the Future is to see the ebb and flow of various substance use trends over the longer term,” Megan Patrick, Ph.D., the principal investigator of the Monitoring the Future panel study, said. “As more and more of our original cohorts – first recruited as teens – now enter later adulthood, we will be able to examine the patterns and effects of drug use throughout the life course.”
The study was conducted by scientists at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research and was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
