Cannabis Use and Legalization Support: New Data from Gallup Surveys

Image courtesy of Gallup

A recent Gallup poll offered combined data on adult Americans’ self-reported cannabis usage and opinions. The article detailed data on answers to questions including, “Keeping in mind that all of your answers in this survey are confidential, do you, yourself, smoke marijuana?” and “Do you think the use of marijuana should be legal, or not?” Corresponding graphs contained data from several decades with updated data from 2023-2024. The article was published November 1, 2024.

“Fifteen percent of Americans report they smoke marijuana according to combined Gallup data from 2023 and 2024,” the report stated. “While not statistically different from the average of 14% in 2021-2022, it is consistent with the upward trend in recent years.” Gallup first added the question on cannabis smoking to its annual Consumption Habits survey in 2013. Since then, the percentage of those who report cannabis use has more than doubled, from the 7% who reported it in 2013.

The data on cannabis smoking was broken down by characteristics:

• Men (17%) are more likely than women (11%) to report that they smoke cannabis.
• Adults aged 55 and older (10%) are less likely to report using cannabis than are middle-aged (18%) and young (19%) adults.
• Smoking cannabis is more common among adults without a college degree (17%) than it is among college graduates (11%).
• Democrats (23%) are more than twice as likely as Republicans (10%) to report using cannabis, with independents’ rate at 14%.
• Regionally, the highest rates of cannabis usage are in the West (19%), Midwest (16%) and East (16%), compared to 11% in the South.

A separate, half-sample Consumption Habits survey asked the question, “Keeping in mind that all of your answers in this survey are confidential, have you, yourself, ever happened to try marijuana?” With the combined 2023-2024 data, the percentage responding that they have tried cannabis is 47%. Starting at 4% in 1969, the percentage increased until 2021 when the percentage was 49%.

Additionally, another Gallup survey asked, “Do you think the use of marijuana should be legal, or not?” In 1969 the percentage answering yes to this question was 12%, increasing until a high of 70%, and 68% in 2024.

Earlier this year, the Pew Research Center release data from a January 2024 survey on adults’ opinions on cannabis in the US. One of the major findings was that out of 5,140 respondents, only 11% of respondents stated that cannabis should not be legal at all. The majority (57% of respondents) stated that cannabis should be legal for both recreational and medical uses, and 32% stated that it should be legal for medical uses only. “Opinions about marijuana legalization have changed little over the past five years,” the report noted. A February 2024 Pew study revealed that 79% of all Americans live in a state with at least one cannabis dispensary, with California having the most dispensaries by far—over 3600 out of the 15,000 total in the US.