Is there a connection between marijuana use and alcohol consumption? This is what a recent study published in Addiction hopes to address as a researcher from the University of Michigan investigated daily of near-daily (DND) use patterns of alcohol and cannabis for young adults into adulthood. This study has the potential to help researchers, legislators, and the public better understand the risks associated with marijuana use, especially with legalization of marijuana spreading across the United States.
For the study, the researchers analyzed self-reported data obtained from the Monitoring the Future Panel Study to ascertain DND patterns for marijuana and alcohol use. The study included surveys from approximately 20,000 adults between 19 and 65 years of age in 2023, along with yearly data from 389,639 adults between 1988 and 2023. The criteria for DND included using marijuana of alcohol a minimum of 20 times over the past 30 days for ages 19 to 30 between 1988 and 2023, 35 to 50 years of age between 2008 and 2023, and 55 to 65 years of age in 2023.
In the end, the researchers found that DND marijuana use was almost triple the DND alcohol use among individuals between 19 and 30 years old, which was also observed with individuals between 35 and 50 years old, with a convergence but not a crossover for early midlife adults.
The study notes, “In the United States, daily or near-daily (DND) alcohol use remains more prevalent than DND cannabis use among late midlife adults, but the opposite is true for young adults.”
This study comes as marijuana legalization continues to take hold across the United States, with more than half of the states having either fully legalized or decriminalized marijuana entirely, and only four states (Idaho, Wyoming, Kansas, and South Carolina) still listing marijuana as fully illegal. Therefore, this study could provide better insights into the benefits and risks of marijuana use for individuals, for both the short and long term.
What new connections between marijuana use and alcohol consumption will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: Addiction, Marijuana Moment, DISA Global Solutions