Survey: Smoking Cannabis Remains the Primary Method of Administration for Consumers

LA JOLLA, California — Cannabis consumers are most likely to choose to ingest the substance via smoking as opposed to other routes of administration, according to data published recently in the journal Addiction.

A researcher from the University of California at San Diego assessed cannabis consumption patterns among nationally representative sample of participants. Consistent with prior studies, he reported that the most commonly reported ingestion method was smoking (64 percent).

Those who reported consuming cannabis for recreational purposes were more likely to acknowledge smoking as their primary method of ingestion. Recreational-only consumers were also more likely to report vaporizing cannabis. By contrast, medical cannabis users were far more likely to acknowledge using cannabis topicals than were recreational-only consumers. Over half of respondents who reported using cannabis for both recreational and medical purposes acknowledged using “combustion methods nearly every day.”

The author concluded: “[T]his study provide[s] the most recent nationally representative description of cannabis administration methods with particularly good representations in male, older, and minority respondents, who were often underrepresented in previous studies using online panels.”

Full text of the study, “Heterogeneities in administration methods among cannabis users by use purpose and state legalization status: Findings from a nationally representative survey in the US, 2020,” appears in Addiction.