SAFE GC Coalition: NIDA Supported Survey Says Many Young Adults Use Cannabis to Fall Asleep

According to the 2025 Monitoring the Future Survey (MTF), young people are using cannabis as a sleep aid. MTF is one of the nation’s most relied upon scientific sources of valid information on trends in use of licit and illicit psychoactive drugs by U.S. adolescents, college students, young adults, and adults up to age 60. MTF is conducted each year by researchers at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health and has been doing so since 1975.

According to the new findings based on a survey given to young adults aged 19 to 30, more than 1 in 5 young adults (22%) reported using cannabis or alcohol to help them fall asleep.

Cannabis was far more common than alcohol for this purpose: 18% said they used cannabis to sleep, compared to 7% who used alcohol to sleep. Among those who had used any cannabis in the past year, 41% said they did so specifically to initiate sleep.

Researchers say that using these substances to get to sleep can backfire because they can interfere with the ability to stay asleep and with the quality of sleep. They appear to disrupt sleep in the long term. The fact that so many young adults reported that they use cannabis to sleep is alarming news.

Long-term, regular use of these substances to get to sleep may lead to worse sleep problems and increased risk for substance use disorder Researchers maintain. For example, frequently using a substance to get to sleep may lead to tolerance, or needing more of it to get the same effect. In other words, rather than resulting in better sleep, it may lead to additional sleep problems and escalating substance use as high-quality sleep is critical for mental health and regulating mood.

Published in JAMA Pediatrics, the study analyzed data from 1,473 young U.S. adults and found gender and racial disparities in the use of these substances to sleep:

• Women were nearly twice as likely as men to use cannabis to help them get to sleep.
• Participants identifying as another gender were more than four times as likely as men to do so.
• Black young adults were three times as likely as white peers to use alcohol for sleep.

The research is one of the first national examinations of how and why young adults use substances to manage sleep. Given the high co-occurrence of substance use and sleep problems in young adults, clinicians should be aware of this issue. The findings emphasize the necessity of effective, integrated screening and interventions.

The MTF longitudinal Panel Study annually tracks substance use trends and is a component of Monitoring the Future conducting follow-up surveys on a subset of these participants (about 20,000 people per year), collecting data from individuals every other year from ages 19 to 30 and every five years after age 30 to track their drug use through adulthood. Participants self-report their drug use behaviors across various periods, including lifetime, past-year (12 months), past-month (30 days), and other use frequencies depending on the substance type.

SAFE is the only alcohol and substance use prevention agency in Glen Cove whose mission is to eliminate alcohol and substance use in Glen Cove. Its Coalition is concerned about cannabis use- especially in youth as their brains are developing. The Coalition is conducting a prevention awareness campaign entitled “Keeping Glen Cove SAFE; Underage Cannabis Use,” to educate and update the community regarding cannabis use and its negative consequences. To learn more about the SAFE Glen Cove Coalition please follow us on www.facebook.com/safeglencovecoalition or visit SAFE’s website to learn more about Cannabis/Marijuana use at www.safeglencove.org.

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