New data show that daily or near-daily cannabis use among adults ages 19–30 reached an all-time high in 2025.

Adolescent-onset use occurs while reward, stress, emotional, and executive-control circuits are developing.

Early age of use, high-potency THC, easy access, and frequent or daily exposure are greatest concerns.

A few days after the newest Monitoring the Future annual data were released, Lantie Jorandby, MD, a former University of Florida College of Medicine mentee, called me. Jorandby is a founder, CEO, and lead psychiatrist at Canopy Pines Recovery, a women’s-only residential program for addiction and co-occurring mental illness. She was concerned about increasing numbers of women with cannabis use disorder and polysubstance dependence. Often, cannabis was not the only drug. Cannabis is frequently a part of a complicated psychiatric and polydrug clinical picture that often includes nicotine, alcohol, opioids, stimulants, and misuse of prescribed medications.

National data confirm Jorandby’s concerns. Young women use cannabis at about the same rate as young men. Daily cannabis use in young adults has reached a historic high, and cannabis and nicotine vaping remain extraordinarily common. I recently reported daily cannabis use at an all-time high.

When discussing daily marijuana use, it’s important to understand that THC exposure is not just a series of individual intoxications. The brain responds to repeated use by changing, and the brain on daily cannabis is not the same as the brain before use started.

Daily Use Is the Real Story

In 2025, 41.9 percent of young adults ages 19–30 reported cannabis use in the preceding year, and 28.8 percent used in the past month. The most important number, however, was 11.8 percent.

Nearly one in eight young adults (11.8 percent) reported cannabis use on at least 20 occasions in the preceding 30 days—the Monitoring the Future definition of daily or near-daily use. It was the highest level ever recorded and substantially increased from 6.9 percent in 2015. Daily cannabis use exceeds daily alcohol use among young adults.

The 2025 Monitoring the Future data report that daily, or near-daily, cannabis use among eighth graders was unchanged from 2024. Even this relatively low prevalence represents tens of thousands of predominantly 13- and........

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