Cannabis use in America isn’t just growing. It’s getting stronger, sneakier, and more addictive, and the newest federal numbers show exactly how much.
The 2025 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (SAMHSA) is out, and marijuana is the story. Here’s what’s actually in the data.
The Numbers Are Bigger Than Ever
- 61.6 million Americans aged 12+ used marijuana in the past year, up from 53.2 million in 2021.
- 43.8 million used it in the past month alone, up from 37.0 million in 2021.
- Marijuana is now, by far, the most-used illicit drug in the country. Of the 69.8 million people who used any illicit drug in 2025, 61.6 million of them used marijuana, a huge majority of the total.
- SAMHSA’s own analysis is blunt about why illicit drug use overall is climbing: “This increase is largely tied to the increase in marijuana use.”
Who’s Actually Driving the Surge? Not Teens.
This is the part that surprises people. Growth is coming from adults, not kids.
| Age group | Past-month use, 2021 | Past-month use, 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Adults 26+ | 12.3% | 14.9% (up) |
| Young adults 18 to 25 | 24.6% | 23.3% (down slightly) |
| Teens 12 to 17 | 6.1% | 5.0% (down) |
Adult America is smoking, vaping, eating, and dabbing more cannabis than it ever has. And that’s exactly where the addiction numbers are climbing too.
Nearly 1 in 3 Users Now Meet the Bar for Addiction
“Marijuana use disorder” is the clinical, DSM-5 term for cannabis addiction, the same diagnostic framework used for alcohol or opioid addiction: using more than intended, failed attempts to cut back, cravings, giving up other activities, and more.
In 2025:
- 19.3 million Americans aged 12+ had a marijuana use disorder in the past year, up from 16.7 million in 2021 (6.0% of the population to 6.7%).
- Set against the 61.6 million past-year users, that’s nearly one in three (31%) of everyone who uses marijuana meeting the clinical criteria for addiction.
- Among adults 26 and older specifically, the disorder rate rose from 4.7% to 5.7%, the sharpest adult increase in the dataset.
For context: overall drug use disorder, a bucket that includes marijuana, cocaine, opioids, meth, and misused prescription drugs, barely moved, 8.7% to 8.9%, not a statistically significant change. That flatness is hiding a shift underneath it: opioid and prescription-sedative disorder rates fell over the same period, while marijuana use disorder rose enough to offset those declines and then some. Cannabis is becoming a bigger share of America’s addiction problem, even as other categories improve.
Teens Who Use Are Hit Even Harder
Fewer teens are using marijuana today than in 2021. But the ones who do are developing a more severe form of the disorder than adults do.
- 1.1 million adolescents aged 12 to 17 had a marijuana use disorder in 2025, that’s about half of the 2.2 million teens who used marijuana in the past year at all.
- Among people who have a marijuana use disorder, most cases are mild (53.4% overall). Teens are the exception: 1 in 3 adolescents (33.4%) with the disorder have a severe case, more than double the rate among adults 26+ (13.8%).
Smaller number of teens using. Same, or worse, severity when they do.
Stronger, Sneakier, and Everywhere
It isn’t your parents’ joint anymore.
- 39.2% of past-year users now vape marijuana (24.2 million people), and among teens who use it monthly, vaping isn’t the exception, it’s the norm: 69.8% vape.
- 14.5% dab waxes, shatter, or concentrates (8.9 million people), products that can run 80 to 90%+ THC, compared with the 3 to 5% average of flower in the 1960s and ’70s.
- Eating or drinking cannabis products is now the second most common way people use it (49.2%), trailing only smoking (74.8%).
Why This Is Happening
The documentary THC Inc. digs into this exact shift: how the move from prohibition to full commercialization has reshaped young people’s exposure to cannabis, the marketing behind today’s high-potency products, and what a public-health-first approach to regulation could actually look like.
The Bottom Line
Cannabis use in America isn’t just growing. It’s getting more potent, more habitual, and for a meaningful share of users, more addictive. Adults, not teenagers, are driving the growth. But the severity of the disorder among the teens who do use is the real warning sign hiding underneath the growth curve.
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