Smoking weed is now more popular than smoking tobacco [View all]
https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/28/politics/marijuana-tobacco-cigarettes-polling-trump-search/index.html
Getting high reaches an all-time high
Every so often in polling, you get to witness a big changing-of-the-guard moment. That happened a few weeks ago, when Gallup released data on marijuana and tobacco usage in the United States. Two long-term trends finally collided.
For the first time in Gallup polling, more Americans (16%) said they smoke marijuana than had smoked a tobacco cigarette (11%) in the past week
This probably doesn't come as a major shock to those who walk the streets in my New York City neighborhood. There are stores selling cannabis paraphernalia opening up left and right, and the streets smell like what I imagine scared parents believe a rock concert smells like.
At about the time humans first landed on the moon (1969), however, the idea that marijuana would one day be more popular than cigarettes was inconceivable. A Gallup poll from that year found that just 4% of Americans admitted they had even tried marijuana, let alone smoked it regularly. Today, 48% of Americans say they have at least tried it.
That same year (1969), 40% of Americans said they had smoked cigarettes in the same week. This was the lowest percentage recorded by Gallup between 1944 and 1972 of those who said they had smoked a cigarette in the past week.
Marjiuana and tobacco usage trends have been going in opposite directions for a few decades now. By 1985, nearly as many Americans said they had tried marijuana (33%) as had smoked a cigarette in the past week (35%).