Cannabis Smoking Hits a Record High as Cigarette Use Falls to a Record Low, Gallup Finds

New Gallup polling finds 17% of American adults report smoking marijuana, more than double the percentage recorded in 2013, while cigarette smoking has fallen to just 11%.

For generations, marijuana prohibition in the United States was sold partly through fear.

Cannabis consumers were portrayed as irresponsible, dangerous or existing somewhere outside mainstream American life. Meanwhile, cigarettes—a product responsible for an enormous burden of preventable disease and death—were perfectly legal, widely advertised and deeply embedded in American culture.

A new Gallup poll provides a pretty remarkable illustration of just how much that picture has changed.

According to Gallup's latest annual Consumption Habits survey, 17% of U.S. adults now say they smoke marijuana, tying the highest percentage Gallup has ever recorded.

Meanwhile, only 11% of Americans report smoking cigarettes, tying Gallup's record low.

In other words, considerably more American adults now report smoking cannabis than cigarettes.

For anyone who has watched public attitudes toward marijuana evolve over the past several decades, that is a cultural milestone worth paying attention to.

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Marijuana Smoking Has More Than Doubled Since 2013

The long-term numbers are even more striking.

Gallup first began asking Americans this particular question about marijuana smoking in 2013. At the time, only 7% of adults said they smoked cannabis.

Today, that number is 17%.

That means the percentage of Americans reporting marijuana smoking has more than doubled in just 13 years. The latest result also ties the previous record of 17%, established in 2023.

Cannabis consumption isn't limited to smoking, either.

Gallup reports that another 15% of U.S. adults say they consume marijuana edibles, compared with 14% in 2022 and 12% in 2024.

Those figures offer another reminder of something cannabis reform advocates have been saying for years: cannabis consumers aren't some tiny fringe population.

They are millions of ordinary Americans.

They are our friends, family members, coworkers, veterans, patients, parents, business owners and neighbors.

Yet federal law continues to treat marijuana through a prohibition framework built during an entirely different period of American history.

Meanwhile, Cigarette Smoking Has Collapsed

The marijuana numbers become even more interesting when placed beside America's changing relationship with tobacco.

Gallup has tracked cigarette smoking since 1944, when 41% of American adults reported smoking cigarettes.

By 1954, cigarette smoking reached 45%.

Then came a decades-long decline.

Cigarette smoking fell below 30% in 1989, remained consistently below 20% beginning in 2015 and now sits at just 11% of American adults.

That represents one of the most dramatic changes in American consumer behavior Gallup has documented.

And notice how that change happened.

America did not arrest cigarette smokers out of existence.

Instead, society increasingly relied on public-health education, age restrictions, labeling requirements, advertising restrictions, taxation, smoke-free spaces and changing cultural attitudes toward tobacco.

The result has been an extraordinary reduction in cigarette smoking.

There is a lesson here for drug policy.

Public education and sensible regulation can accomplish things prohibition often cannot.

Younger Americans Have Particularly Moved Away From Cigarettes

The generational numbers help explain where these trends may be heading.

According to Gallup, 23% of adults between 18 and 29 report smoking marijuana, while 25% of adults between 30 and 49 say the same.

Cannabis smoking falls to 10% among people ages 50 to 64 and 5% among adults 65 and older.

Cigarette use looks considerably different.

Adults ages 30 to 49 currently have the highest cigarette-smoking rate at 16%, followed by people ages 50 to 64 at 11%.

Young adults have also gravitated more toward vaping: 17% of Americans ages 18 to 29 report vaping.

None of this means inhaling smoke is harmless. Cannabis policy advocates should be able to acknowledge differences in risk between methods of consumption and support honest, evidence-based public-health education.

But public policy should also recognize what Americans are actually doing rather than pretending prohibition has prevented cannabis consumption.

It clearly hasn't.

Americans Remain Divided About Cannabis—but Cannabis Is Increasingly Normalized

Interestingly, increasing marijuana use does not mean Americans universally believe cannabis is beneficial.

Gallup asked respondents whether marijuana generally has a positive or negative effect on people who use it.

The country was almost perfectly divided.

47% said marijuana has a very or somewhat positive effect, while 46% said it has a very or somewhat negative effect.

That disagreement is important.

Cannabis legalization does not require everyone to like cannabis.

It doesn't require everyone to consume cannabis.

And it certainly doesn't require pretending cannabis is completely risk-free.

The central question is whether adults should be criminalized for choosing to consume it and whether prohibition is a better approach than regulation, education and consumer protections.

Those are very different questions.

Cannabis Has Gone From Counterculture to Mainstream America

Perhaps the biggest story behind these numbers isn't marijuana itself.

It's normalization.

In 2013, when Gallup recorded marijuana smoking at 7%, recreational cannabis legalization had only recently begun at the state level.

Today, regulated adult-use cannabis markets operate across much of the country, medical marijuana programs serve millions of patients, and cannabis reform has become a mainstream political issue.

Gallup has previously documented the corresponding transformation in public opinion. In 2023, the organization found that support for legalizing marijuana had reached a then-record 70%, while half of Americans reported having tried marijuana at some point in their lives.

The latest consumption numbers appear to be another chapter in that larger cultural shift.

Cannabis hasn't disappeared under prohibition.

Instead, Americans increasingly stopped treating cannabis consumers as outsiders.

What This Means for Florida

For Floridians, these national trends are particularly relevant.

Florida has one of the country's largest medical marijuana markets, while debates over adult-use legalization, hemp regulation, federal marijuana policy and criminal justice reform continue.

Those debates should be grounded in reality.

And the reality reflected in Gallup's numbers is difficult to reconcile with marijuana's continued treatment under prohibition-oriented policies.

Nearly one in six American adults reports smoking marijuana.

Another 15% report consuming marijuana edibles.

Cannabis is not an obscure activity practiced by a tiny segment of society.

It is part of modern American life.

Our laws should finally begin reflecting that reality.

Regulation Makes More Sense Than Prohibition

There is also an important distinction that sometimes gets lost in cannabis debates.

Normalization doesn't mean encouraging everyone to consume marijuana.

NORML's mission has never required believing that every person should use cannabis. Adults should receive accurate information about potential benefits, risks, impairment, responsible consumption and interactions with other substances.

Young people should be discouraged from using adult-use products.

Consumers deserve tested and accurately labeled products.

Driving while impaired should remain illegal.

But none of those objectives require arresting adults for marijuana.

If anything, the extraordinary decline in cigarette smoking demonstrates that American society possesses tools other than criminalization for changing consumer behavior and addressing public-health concerns.

Cannabis deserves the same rational approach.

The Numbers Tell a Bigger Story

Seventeen percent versus eleven percent.

On the surface, they're just two statistics from a national survey.

But they represent decades of changing American attitudes.

One substance went from being advertised on television, smoked on airplanes and embedded throughout American popular culture to historically low levels of consumption.

The other went from being associated with "Reefer Madness," mass arrests and decades of prohibition to being consumed openly and legally by adults across much of the country.

Today, more Americans tell Gallup they smoke marijuana than cigarettes.

Federal cannabis policy increasingly looks like the thing that hasn't caught up.

The American people already have.

Source: This article is based on Gallup's August 24, 2026 report, U.S. Marijuana Smoking at Record High, Cigarettes at Low, by Megan Brenan. Read the original research and methodology directly from Gallup.

For more coverage of cannabis policy, legalization, science and reform in Florida and across the country, follow Suncoast NORML and support the continuing effort to replace marijuana prohibition with evidence-based cannabis policy.