CDC Proposes New Marijuana Question for 2028 Health Survey

August 26, 2026

Photo by Vitaly Gariev via Pexels.

Federal health surveys don't usually make news, but the CDC's latest proposal is worth flagging if you follow cannabis policy. The agency wants to overhaul a key question in the 2028 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), asking respondents not just how often they use marijuana, but why. That's a meaningful departure from the current setup, which asks only about using marijuana or CBD as a sleep aid. The new version would ask about frequency of use in general terms, then follow up by asking people to state their reasons for using it at all.

The timing isn't incidental. This proposal is moving through the federal rulemaking process at the same moment the Trump administration is actively pushing to reschedule marijuana at the DEA, with a formal hearing process already underway. Better data on how and why Americans actually use cannabis could end up feeding directly into that debate. Right now, the public comment period on CDC's proposed survey redesign is open, and it closes in mid-to-late October 2026, giving researchers, advocates, and industry stakeholders a narrow window to push for changes before the question wording is locked in.

What the New CDC Question Actually Asks

Photo by RDNE Stock project via Pexels.

The core of the proposed change is a single new question: Do you currently use marijuana every day, most days, some days, or not at all? That phrasing is deliberately broad, capturing a spectrum of use rather than a simple yes-or-no. There's also an explicit instruction built into the survey that respondents should exclude CBD-only products when answering, which draws a clearer line between marijuana use and hemp-derived CBD use than prior survey editions managed.

For anyone who answers that they use marijuana on at least some days, the survey adds a follow-up: For what reason or reasons do you use marijuana? That's the part that represents the real shift. Previous versions of the NHIS never asked respondents to characterize their motivation. This one does, and presumably the answer options will let people identify medical reasons, recreational reasons, or some combination of both.

This question isn't a standalone add-on. It's part of a much larger proposed redesign of the entire 2028 NHIS, which CDC undertakes periodically to keep the survey aligned with current public health priorities. Embedding a reasons-for-use question inside that broader redesign suggests the agency sees cannabis use patterns as something worth tracking with more nuance going forward, not just as a yes/no behavioral checkbox.

Taken together, the wording changes mark a pivot from purely counting how many people use marijuana and how often, toward understanding intent. That's a meaningfully different kind of dataset, and one that researchers, insurers, and policymakers have been asking federal agencies to collect for years.

Why This Is a Change From the Current Survey

Young adults aged 18-24 report current marijuana use at nearly double the overall adult rate (25% vs. 15.3%), while only 3.7% of adults use it specifically as a sleep aid, according to 2024 CDC data.

To understand how big a jump this is, it helps to look at what the NHIS currently asks. Both the 2024 edition and the ongoing 2026 edition include a question aimed squarely at one use case: whether respondents use marijuana or CBD specifically to help them fall asleep or stay asleep. It's a narrow, single-purpose question, and the 2024 results reflected that narrow framing. CDC found that 3.7% of adults reported using marijuana or CBD as a sleep aid, a useful data point but a fairly small slice of the overall picture of cannabis use in the U.S.

The draft 2028 survey drops that sleep-specific question entirely. In its place is the broader reasons-for-use item described above, which doesn't corner respondents into a single justification. That's a tacit acknowledgment from CDC that sleep is just one of many reasons people reach for cannabis, alongside pain management, anxiety, appetite, recreation, or general wellness, and that a survey built around one narrow behavior was leaving a lot of the real picture uncollected.

Other CDC data underscores just how much is missing from a sleep-only framing. The agency's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) already shows that 15.3% of adults report current marijuana use. Break that down by age and the picture sharpens further: roughly one in four adults between 18 and 34 report current use, and about one in eight adults report using marijuana daily. Those are not small subgroups, and a survey instrument that only asks about sleep captures almost none of the texture behind those numbers.

The Rescheduling Backdrop

None of this is happening in a vacuum. On April 23, 2026, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche issued an order that immediately placed FDA-approved marijuana products and state-licensed medical marijuana into Schedule III, a significant procedural move on its own. That same order also set up an expedited DEA hearing process aimed at resolving the much bigger question of moving marijuana out of Schedule I entirely and into Schedule III across the board.

That hearing began June 29, 2026, ran through mid-July, and generated a substantial record. Post-hearing briefs from the parties involved were due August 17, 2026, and DEA followed up by releasing the full hearing transcript, all 2,533 pages of it, on August 25, 2026. Chief Administrative Law Judge Derek Julius is now working through that record to prepare a formal recommendation on rescheduling, a decision that carries real weight even though it isn't the final word (that rests with the DEA Administrator).

Rescheduling proceedings like this one live and die on evidence, particularly evidence about medical use, safety profiles, and abuse potential. A federal health survey that can finally distinguish between someone who uses marijuana for chronic pain management and someone who uses it recreationally on weekends gives agencies something they've genuinely lacked: population-level data on motivation, not just prevalence. It's not hard to see why CDC would want that kind of data collected right as the rescheduling record is being built out, even if the survey redesign and the DEA hearing are technically separate processes running on their own tracks.

How to Weigh In Before the Deadline Closes

CDC is currently accepting public comments on the proposed 2028 NHIS redesign, and the marijuana-use question is just one piece of a much larger document covering dozens of survey changes. Anyone can weigh in, though in practice these comment periods tend to draw responses mostly from researchers, public health organizations, and advocacy groups rather than the general public.

Worth noting: there's a small but real discrepancy in the stated deadline. CDC's own website lists October 20, 2026 as the comment deadline, while the official Federal Register notice specifies that comments must be received by October 19, 2026. If you're planning to submit something, don't cut it close, aim for the earlier date to be safe.

Comments aren't limited to just approving or rejecting the new marijuana question. People can weigh in on the specific wording, suggest additional answer categories for the reasons-for-use follow-up, or push back on CDC's decision to eliminate the CBD-and-sleep question altogether. Some sleep researchers, for instance, might argue that dropping that narrower question loses valuable trend data even as the broader question gains new value.

Federal Register comment periods are a routine part of how these surveys get built, and most pass by with barely any public attention outside a handful of institutional stakeholders who track this stuff closely. This one is a bit different given the rescheduling backdrop, which means advocates and researchers who care about how cannabis-use data gets collected for the next several years have a real, if narrow, opportunity to make their case before the window closes.

One reworded survey question isn't going to settle the argument over whether marijuana belongs in a medical framework, a recreational one, or something that resists that binary entirely. But better federal data on why people actually use cannabis matters more than it might seem at first glance, especially with a rescheduling recommendation working its way through DEA's process right now. Judges, regulators, and researchers all need real-world usage patterns to draw on, and right now the federal government's own surveys have been surprisingly thin on that front.

It's also worth remembering that whatever CDC eventually decides to ask, state and federal law on medical marijuana remain far from aligned. A patient with a state medical card in one state may have no comparable protection crossing into another, and federal scheduling status still shapes everything from banking access to research funding regardless of what any individual state has legalized. Anyone making decisions based on medical marijuana's legal status should check the specific rules in their own state rather than assume uniformity.

Keep an eye on Judge Julius's forthcoming recommendation. However he rules, it's likely to shape how much weight this kind of granular CDC survey data ends up carrying in future policy decisions, and whether federal agencies keep investing in asking Americans not just whether they use cannabis, but why.