Cannabis Smoking Ties Its Record High While Cigarettes Sit at Their Record Low

A July 2026 Gallup poll puts cannabis at 17% of U.S. adults and cigarettes at 11%, and the gap between them is now six points.

By Cannible Editorial

More U.S. adults now smoke cannabis than smoke cigarettes. A July 2026 Gallup poll puts cannabis smoking at 17% of adults and cigarette smoking at 11%, a six-point gap between a record high and a record low recorded in the same survey. If you are trying to picture what the adult next to you actually uses, cannabis is now the more common answer, and it took about a decade to get there.

Here is the short version.

This article is general information, not medical or legal advice. Cannabis laws and product rules vary by state, so confirm current rules with your state regulator and speak to a licensed professional about your own use.

Gallup: U.S. Marijuana Smoking at Record High, Cigarettes at Low — Megan Brenan, published August 24, 2026. Survey of 1,200 U.S. adults, fielded July 1 to 19, 2026.

What the July 2026 Gallup poll found

Gallup asked U.S. adults what they use. 17% said they smoke cannabis. 15% said they use edibles. 11% said they smoke cigarettes.

The 17% sits at the top of Gallup's cannabis tracking data. The 11% is the lowest cigarette figure the organization has recorded. Both numbers came out of the same survey, fielded across the first three weeks of July 2026.

Why cigarettes took about seventy years to reach 11%

Cigarette smoking peaked at 45% of U.S. adults in 1954. Getting from there to 11% took roughly seven decades of public health campaigns, heavy taxation, and smoke-free legislation. That decline was slow and hard-won, and close to every percentage point came out of sustained, deliberate effort.

That history is what gives the 2026 comparison its weight. The cigarette number is low because of decades of policy work. The cannabis number is high because of a much faster shift in what adults consider acceptable and accessible.

Cannabis doubled its user base in about ten years

In 2013, 7% of U.S. adults told Gallup they smoked cannabis. In July 2026, 17% did. That is more than a doubling in roughly a decade.

Set the two timelines side by side and the contrast is the story. Cigarettes needed about seventy years to fall from a dominant share of adults to 11%. Cannabis needed about ten to go from 7% to 17%. In Gallup's long history of tracking American behavior, movement at that pace is uncommon.

Who is inside the 17%

The 17% is one number covering a wide range of people, and it concentrates heavily under age 50.

Smoked cannabis does not show a meaningful skew between men and women. The age ladder, not gender, is what separates users from non-users here.

Why edibles are a separate 15%

Edibles sit at 15% of U.S. adults, close enough to the smoking figure that the two get treated as one market. They describe different behavior and, by gender, a somewhat different group. Women are slightly more likely than men to report using edibles. Smoked cannabis shows no comparable skew.

Gallup reports edibles as a category separate from smoking. The poll does not say how much the two groups overlap, so treat 17% and 15% as two overlapping populations of unknown size rather than as two separate blocks of people you can add together.

Where vaping and nicotine pouches sit

For the wider picture, vaping sits at 9% of U.S. adults, concentrated among 18- to 29-year-olds at 17% and falling to 1% among adults 65 and older. Nicotine pouch use sits at 4% overall, and it is sharply male: 7% of men against 1% of women.

Neither category is growing at the rate cannabis has. The crossover in this poll is specific to cannabis and cigarettes.

What this survey cannot tell you

Gallup surveyed 1,200 adults between July 1 and July 19, 2026, and the result carries a margin of error of 4.0 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. The question asked whether someone uses cannabis. Frequency, potency, product type, and spending all sat outside its scope.

That matters more than it looks. The 17% almost certainly counts someone who shared a pre-roll at a wedding last summer and someone who smokes every evening, and it counts them identically. Those are two very different relationships with cannabis packed into the same percentage point.

As evidence, treat this as what it is: a single cross-sectional self-report survey. It is reliable for direction and weak for magnitude. The trend since 2013 has not reversed, but one poll cannot confirm a trajectory, and self-reported use of a substance that is illegal in some states carries its own reporting bias. The next annual reading is the one that tells you whether 17% is a ceiling or another step.

Frequently asked questions

How many U.S. adults smoke cannabis in 2026?

According to a July 2026 Gallup poll, 17% of U.S. adults report smoking cannabis. That is the highest figure in Gallup's tracking data on the question.

How does cannabis use compare to cigarette use in 2026?

Cannabis smoking, at 17%, exceeds cigarette smoking, at 11%, by six percentage points. Cigarette use is at its lowest recorded level in Gallup's data while cannabis sits at its highest.

How fast has cannabis use grown?

Cannabis use more than doubled between 2013 and 2026, rising from 7% to 17% of U.S. adults in roughly a decade.

Who is most likely to smoke cannabis?

Adults under 50. Gallup reports 25% of adults aged 30 to 49 and 23% of adults aged 18 to 29 smoke cannabis, against 10% of adults 50 to 64 and 5% of adults 65 and older.

Who is most likely to use cannabis edibles?

15% of U.S. adults report using edibles, and women are slightly more likely than men to use them. Smoked cannabis does not show that skew.

What does the Gallup poll not cover?

It does not measure frequency of use, potency preferences, product type breakdown, or consumer spending. It captures whether someone used cannabis, not how much or how often.

Key takeaways

The Cannible Newsroom's take

We would not read 17% as a verdict on how much cannabis America actually consumes. It is a headcount, and a headcount treats the person who shared a pre-roll at a wedding last summer exactly the same as the person who smokes every evening. Those two have almost nothing in common as consumers, and this number cannot tell them apart.

What strikes us is the asymmetry in effort. Cigarettes fell to 11% because a generation of policy pushed them there, deliberately, over seventy years. Cannabis reached 17% with nothing comparable pulling it up, in about a decade. That says less about either substance than it does about how fast the acceptability of a habit moves once the legal and social barriers come down.

Our concern is the gap the poll leaves open. Frequency and potency are where the real public health questions live, and neither is measured at this scale by anyone. Until they are, the honest position is that we know more adults are using cannabis and we know very little about how they are using it. Anyone citing 17% as evidence of a crisis, or of harmlessness, is reading more into a headcount than a headcount can carry.

We will update this article as new Gallup readings, or better frequency and potency data, become available.

Sources and further reading

For the rules that apply where you live, check your state cannabis regulator. For questions about your own use, including interactions with medication, speak to a licensed medical professional or a pharmacist.

Where to go from here

If this poll made you curious about what is actually on shelves near you, start with the dispensary directory and see what is licensed in your area. If you are new to buying legally, our guide to choosing a dispensary covers what to ask at the counter and how to read what you are handed. And if you want to understand what you are buying rather than just where to buy it, the strains guide breaks down the categories behind the labels.

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