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Cannabis use among US parents roughly quadruples daily alcohol use by 2024

Study finds nearly six million children live with a near-daily-using parent, steepest rises hit the lower-income households legalization's marketing targeted

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By 2024, 8 percent of American parents used cannabis on most days, and an estimated 5.9 million U.S. children lived with a parent who used it that frequently, according to a new study published in the journal Addictive Behaviors.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, analyzed data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health covering nearly 482,000 Americans aged 12 and older, tracking changes between 2012 — the year Colorado and Washington voted to legalize recreational cannabis — and 2024. Daily use among parents reached 5.2 percent, and 6.7 percent met the clinical criteria for cannabis use disorder. Daily cannabis use among parents is now roughly four times as common as daily alcohol use.

The increases cut across nearly all demographic groups, but the steepest rises were among younger and unmarried parents, lower-income households, and those without a four-year college degree — the same groups that bought the legal market's cheapest, most heavily advertised products. The commercialization that began in 2012 created not just a regulated supply but a consumer industry, with the demographics to prove where its marketing landed.

Physicians not involved in the study flagged the second-order effects. Dr. Jarid Pachter of Stony Brook Medicine noted that children whose parents use marijuana are more likely to use it themselves as they age, and that THC affects attention, memory, coordination and reaction time — "when you have young children, you need to be alert and able to respond to their needs." He also pointed to rising emergency room visits from children accidentally consuming edibles, which can cause severe sedation, breathing problems and hospitalization.

The decade-long natural experiment continues: the study measures only parents, and the youngest subjects in the survey dataset were 12.