Consider this for an illustration of just how much society has changed in the past few generations: New data shows that, for the first time ever, more Americans use marijuana than tobacco. It’s positive news from a public health standpoint. Whatever the legitimate concerns about the U.S. becoming a pot-head nation, weed is demonstrably safer than cigarettes. Yet federal law continues to treat pot like the dangerous illicit drug that past generations long thought it was. It’s time for that to change.
A study funded by the National Institutes for Health found that marijuana-use and cigarette-use trends have gone in dramatically opposite directions in recent decades. The study found 16% of Americans today use marijuana, more than twice the percentage as in 1999. Almost half of Americans today say they have tried marijuana at some point, compared to about a third who had tried it as of 1999. Reaching back further, to 1969, just 4% of Americans said they had tried pot.
Cigarette use, meanwhile, is plummeting. Just 11% of Americans say they currently smoke, compared with 23% in 1999 and 40% in 1969.
