Cannabis Statistics 2026: The Definitive, Sourced Data Hub

In 2023, an estimated 43.6 million Americans aged 12 or older — 15.4% of that population — used marijuana in the past month, and roughly 61.8 million (about 21.8%) used it in the past year, according to SAMHSA's 2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). That past-month figure includes about 15.8 million people (5.6%) who reported vaping cannabis. NSDUH, run by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, is the largest and most-cited U.S. survey of self-reported substance use, which is why it anchors this page.

For context on the trend: past-month cannabis use has climbed steadily over the last two decades as legalization spread and stigma fell. The 2023 NSDUH past-month rate of 15.4% is among the highest the survey has recorded. The honest caveat is that all of this is self-reported, and reporting tends to rise as legal risk falls — so some of the increase reflects people being more willing to say yes, not only more people using.

Cannabis use is far from evenly distributed. Young adults aged 18 to 25 are consistently the heaviest-using group, while use among adolescents is comparatively low and falling (see the youth section below). The table reflects SAMHSA's 2023 NSDUH past-month estimates, the cleanest age breakdown the federal survey publishes.

Source: SAMHSA, 2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). Note that adults 26+ are the largest single block of users in raw numbers simply because the group is so big, even though young adults use at a higher rate.

As of 2026, 24 states plus Washington, D.C. have legalized adult-use (recreational) cannabis, and roughly 38–39 states plus D.C. operate a comprehensive medical cannabis program (with a few additional states allowing only limited, low-THC or CBD access). The 24 adult-use states are Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington.

A couple of nuances worth knowing. Washington, D.C. legalized possession and home cultivation in 2015 but — because of a congressional budget rider — still has no legal retail sales, so it's an asterisk in most counts. And the three most recent additions to the adult-use column were Maryland, Minnesota, and Ohio, all in 2023. At the federal level, cannabis remained a controlled substance into 2026, even as a proposed move from Schedule I to Schedule III worked through the regulatory process.

Sources: Legality of cannabis by U.S. jurisdiction (Wikipedia, compiling state statutes); Marijuana Policy Project; Congressional Research Service. Counts shift as states act, so we date them explicitly.

Legal U.S. cannabis retail sales surpassed $30 billion in 2024, per a NORML analysis of state data, and most analysts estimate 2025 sales in the $33–34 billion range. That makes regulated cannabis one of the larger consumer categories in the country — comparable in scale to industries most people assume dwarf it. Forward-looking projections vary by firm, but several (including MJBiz) sketch a path toward roughly $60 billion by 2030 if large markets like Pennsylvania, Florida, and Texas expand and federal tax relief arrives.

For governments, the tax take has been substantial. States have collected more than $20 billion in cumulative cannabis tax revenue since adult-use sales began in 2014, according to data compiled by the Marijuana Policy Project. Here's the trajectory of estimated national legal sales:

Sources: NORML analysis of state-reported sales; Marijuana Policy Project (cumulative tax revenue); MJBiz and Whitney Economics (forecasts). One honest footnote: forecasts have been revised downward recently — Whitney Economics cut its multi-year U.S. retail outlook in 2025 — because price compression and Section 280E taxes are squeezing operators. Big market, thin margins.

The number of registered medical cannabis patients in the U.S. surpassed 5 million in 2023, and a December 2025 White House statement referenced more than 6 million registered patients nationwide. The true count is genuinely uncertain, because several states with adult-use markets dropped or never maintained mandatory patient registries — once anyone over 21 can buy legally, many former medical patients simply stop renewing cards, which makes the registered total undercount medical use in some states even as it grows in others.

On average, where registries exist, somewhere around 1–2% of a state's population enrolls in the medical program. Patients most commonly register for chronic pain, with PTSD, anxiety, cancer-related symptoms, and seizure disorders also prominent across state qualifying-condition lists. As always with cannabis and health: this is general information, not medical advice, and qualifying conditions vary state by state.

Workplace data is one of the clearest real-world signals of rising adult use. In the Quest Diagnostics Drug Testing Index covering 2023 (released 2024), marijuana positivity in the general U.S. workforce reached about 4.5% — up roughly 45% over five years — and post-accident marijuana positivity hit 7.5%. Quest's index is based on analysis of nearly 10 million de-identified workforce urine drug tests, which makes it the most comprehensive private dataset on the subject.

Two things stand out. First, positivity is consistently higher in states with legal adult-use markets, which tracks with legalization and social acceptance. Second, post-accident positivity has more than doubled over roughly a decade — a number worth taking seriously, while remembering the same caveat that runs through all THC testing: a positive test detects past use, not necessarily impairment at the moment of the incident, because THC metabolites can linger for days to weeks.

This is the area where honest framing matters most. In an NHTSA study of seriously or fatally injured road users at seven Level 1 trauma centers (data collected September 2019–July 2021), 25.1% tested positive for active THC — making cannabinoids the single most frequently detected substance, ahead of alcohol at 23.1%. Overall, 55.8% of those road users tested positive for at least one potentially impairing substance.

But detection is not the same as impairment. NHTSA itself cautions that finding THC in a person's system does not establish that cannabis caused or contributed to a crash, because THC can remain detectable long after any impairing effect has worn off, and many of these cases involved multiple substances. Earlier NHTSA roadside surveys did document a real rise in drivers testing positive for THC — from 8.6% of weekend nighttime drivers in 2007 to 12.6% in 2013–2014 — so the prevalence trend is upward even if causation is hard to isolate. The responsible takeaway, and the one we'd want any cannabis user to hear: driving impaired is dangerous and the research on roadside prevalence is rising, even though THC tests don't cleanly measure impairment the way a breathalyzer measures alcohol.

Here's the finding that most surprises people who assume legalization floods schools with weed: teen cannabis use has been falling and now sits at or near a 30-year low. According to the University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey — the long-running, NIDA-funded gold standard for adolescent drug-use data — past-year cannabis use among 12th graders was about 26% in 2025, with 8th and 10th graders far lower, and 8th-grade past-year use dropping another 16% year-over-year into 2025.

Source: Monitoring the Future, University of Michigan / National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), 2024 and 2025 surveys. Researchers have repeatedly noted that the wave of state legalization since 2012 has not produced the predicted spike in youth use — if anything, the lines kept dropping, a point NIDA and MTF investigators make directly.

Cannabidiol (CBD) — the non-intoxicating cannabinoid that went mainstream after the 2018 Farm Bill legalized hemp federally — is its own large market sitting alongside THC cannabis. Statista's market outlook puts U.S. CBD product revenue at roughly $3 billion in 2025, while broader research firms estimate the global cannabidiol market in the $10 billion range for 2025, growing at double-digit annual rates. The spread between estimates is wide because firms define "CBD market" differently (oils only vs. all hemp-derived products), so treat any single CBD figure as an order-of-magnitude guide rather than a precise count.

The hemp side of the industry has also become legally and politically tangled, as intoxicating hemp-derived cannabinoids like delta-8 THC exploited the gap between hemp legality and cannabis prohibition — a regulatory loose end that lawmakers were actively trying to close heading into 2026.

A clear majority of Americans support legal cannabis, but the trend recently ticked down. Gallup's November 2025 poll found 64% of U.S. adults think cannabis should be legal — a strong majority, but below the 68–70% range Gallup recorded from 2020 through 2024. Gallup attributed the dip largely to a 13-point drop in support among Republicans (to 40%), while Democrats (85%) and independents (66%) held steady.

Pew Research Center frames the question differently and finds even broader acceptance of some legal access: in its early-2024 survey, about 88% of Americans said cannabis should be legal for medical use, recreational use, or both, with 57% favoring legalization for both purposes and just 11% saying it should not be legal at all. The long arc is unmistakable — support has roughly doubled since the early 2000s.

Sources: Gallup (annual Crime and Consumption polls, including November 2025); Pew Research Center (2024).

A few habits will keep you out of trouble when citing cannabis data. Always name the source and the year — "15.4% of Americans 12+ used cannabis in the past month (SAMHSA, 2023 NSDUH)" is bulletproof; "most Americans use weed" is not. Distinguish detection from impairment in any driving or workplace stat. Treat market and CBD forecasts as ranges, not facts, because they're modeled and frequently revised. And remember the lag: in 2026, the freshest federal usage data still describes 2023.

If a number on this page ever looks stale to you, that's a feature — we date everything precisely so you can tell. This is general information for context and curiosity, not medical or legal advice, and cannabis laws and health guidance vary by state and change often.