1 in 5 Older Adults Now Use Cannabis, Surveys Show

August 20, 2026

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One in five adults over 50 now say they've used a cannabis product containing THC in the past year, according to the University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging. That's not a rounding error or a niche subgroup — it's a fifth of an entire generation that, for the most part, grew up when cannabis was a felony offense in every state in the country.

Worth being precise about the source here: this is a university poll, not a freshly released federal report. The poll was conducted through the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation at the University of Michigan, using NORC at the University of Chicago to field the survey. That said, it isn't an outlier finding. Federal data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) tracks the same upward line among older Americans, which is exactly what makes this worth paying attention to rather than dismissing as one poll's quirk.

The bigger context is a genuine reversal of decades of assumptions about who uses cannabis. Youth and young-adult consumption has been trending down in national surveys for years. Meanwhile, adults in their 50s, 60s, and 70s — the demographic public health messaging has historically ignored on this topic — are now the fastest-growing group of cannabis consumers in the country. That shift has real implications for doctors, pharmacists, and families who haven't updated their assumptions about who's rolling up or dosing a gummy at night.

What the Michigan Poll Actually Found

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The Michigan poll surveyed 3,379 adults age 50 and older between February and March 2024, giving it a large enough sample to break results down meaningfully by age and usage pattern. The topline number — 21% reporting past-year use of a THC-containing product — is itself notable, but the internal breakdown tells a more interesting story than the headline suggests.

Of that 21%, roughly 9% said they'd used cannabis once or twice in the past year, while about 12% reported using it at least monthly. Do the math and more than half of all older-adult cannabis users aren't occasional dabblers — they're regulars, folding it into a routine the way someone might have a nightly glass of wine or a daily ibuprofen.

Age matters a lot within this group. Among adults 50 to 64, use jumped to 19%, while it dropped sharply to just 6% among those 65 and older. That gap likely reflects generational exposure as much as anything else — the younger end of this bracket came of age during or just after cannabis's mainstream cultural arrival, while the 65-plus cohort skews toward people who spent most of their adult lives under strict prohibition.

When asked why they use it, respondents gave answers that read less like recreation and more like self-directed wellness management. Relaxation topped the list at 81%, followed by sleep at 68%, general enhancement of activities at 64%, physical pain relief at 63%, and mental health or mood support at 53%. Those numbers overlap heavily — most users cited more than one reason — which suggests cannabis is filling several roles at once for this age group rather than serving one narrow purpose.

A Blind Spot With Doctors

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Here's the part of the survey that should concern anyone in primary care: among older adults using cannabis at least monthly, 44% said they had never discussed that use with a healthcare provider. Nearly half of regular users are keeping this information out of the room where it might actually matter most — during a medication review.

The poll also picked up signs that some of this use isn't entirely benign. Between 17% and 22% of respondents endorsed tolerance-related items — needing more of the product to get the same effect — and 13% reported experiencing cravings, both of which are recognized markers screeners use to flag potential cannabis use disorder. These aren't dramatic numbers, but they're not nothing either, especially in a population that's largely flying under clinical radar.

The stakes are higher for older adults specifically because polypharmacy is so common in this group. Someone taking blood thinners, benzodiazepines, or blood pressure medication faces real interaction risks with cannabis, and a doctor can't flag or monitor for those risks if they don't know cannabis is in the picture at all.

A separate study led by researchers at Rutgers, drawing on 2021-2023 NSDUH data, found the same disclosure gap from a different angle: only 19.2% of past-year cannabis users age 65 and older said they'd discussed their use with a clinician. The same study found that among older adults who did interact with the healthcare system, just 36.8% reported being screened at all for cannabis or other illegal drug use. In other words, the silence runs in both directions — patients aren't volunteering it, and providers often aren't asking.

The Federal Numbers Tell a Similar Story

Past-month cannabis use among adults 65 and older has risen sharply, from just 1% in 2006-07 to 7% in 2023, marking a sevenfold increase over roughly 15 years.

The Michigan poll isn't operating in isolation — it lines up with what federal surveillance data has been showing for a few years now. A study published in JAMA Internal Medicine in July 2025, led by researcher Benjamin Han and colleagues, tracked NSDUH data specifically among adults 65 and older and found current cannabis use climbing from 4.8% in 2021 to 5.2% in 2022 and then up to 7% in 2023. That's close to a 46% increase in just two years, a pace that outstrips almost any other demographic shift in drug-use surveillance.

Put that against the historical baseline and the change looks even starker. Back in 2006-2007, fewer than 1% of adults 65 and older reported past-month cannabis use. Getting from under 1% to 7% over roughly a decade and a half tracks almost exactly with the wave of state-level legalization that started with Colorado and Washington in 2012.

The broader NSDUH numbers for 2025, released by SAMHSA under HHS, show past-month cannabis use across all age groups rising from 13.2% in 2021 to 15.1% in 2025. But the age composition of that growth is the real story: use is climbing among adults 26 and older while continuing to decline among teens and young adults. That's a reversal of the pattern public health officials spent decades treating as fixed — that cannabis is primarily a young person's habit that people age out of. Older Americans, it turns out, are aging into it.

Why More Seniors Are Turning to Cannabis

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Several forces are converging to push cannabis use upward among people who spent most of their lives avoiding it. State legalization is the most obvious one — with adult-use or medical cannabis now legal in some form across most of the country, the drug is simply easier to obtain, and dispensary shopping has replaced back-alley deals for a lot of older buyers who'd never have considered the latter.

Generational identity plays a role too. Much of this cohort came of age during the counterculture years of the 1960s and 70s, when cannabis first became a mainstream cultural touchpoint even if it stayed illegal. That earlier familiarity, even if dormant for decades, seems to make re-engagement with cannabis in your 60s a lot less psychologically fraught than it would be for someone with zero prior exposure.

Then there's the practical health angle. Chronic pain, insomnia, and anxiety are extremely common complaints in this age group, and cannabis is increasingly showing up as something people use alongside — or in place of — prescription drugs like opioids, benzodiazepines, or sleep aids that carry their own well-documented risks for older bodies.

Product innovation matters here as well. Legal markets now offer low-THC tinctures, precisely dosed edibles, and topicals aimed at pain relief without any psychoactive effect at all — options that appeal to older users who have no interest in smoking or in the high-potency flower and concentrates that dominate younger consumer segments.

None of this changes the fact that legal status still varies enormously by state, and medical program rules, dispensary access, and allowable product types differ from one place to the next. Readers should check their own state's current laws before assuming any of this applies to them.

The 21% figure is going to grab headlines, but it's not actually the most important number in this data. The real story is the gap between how many older adults are using cannabis and how few are telling their doctors about it. A near-majority of regular users staying silent during medical visits isn't a minor communication lapse — it's a blind spot that leaves physicians managing complex medication regimens without a piece of information that could genuinely matter.

Expect these numbers to keep rising. Boomers are aging into their 60s and 70s in large numbers over the next decade, state legalization shows no signs of reversing course, and product options keep expanding to fit exactly the kind of low-key, wellness-oriented use this survey describes. If anything, 21% looks like a floor rather than a ceiling.

The practical fix isn't complicated, even if it requires a cultural adjustment on both sides of the exam table. Healthcare providers may need to start asking about cannabis use as a routine part of intake, with the same lack of judgment they'd bring to questions about alcohol or tobacco. And families checking in on aging parents might do well to ask the same question directly, rather than assuming cannabis is something that stopped being relevant to their parents' generation somewhere around 1985.