A new study of thousands of people nationwide suggests that secondhand harm caused by marijuana use is far less prevalent than that of alcohol, with respondents reporting secondhand harm from drinking at nearly six times the rate they did for cannabis. Perceived harms from opioids and other drugs also outweighed those related to marijuana.
Looking at responses from 7,799 people to the 2020 U.S, National Alcohol Survey, researchers found that more than a third (34.2 percent) said they’d experienced secondhand harms related to alcohol use over the course of their lives. Just 5.5 percent, meanwhile, said they’d ever experienced secondhand harms related to cannabis.
As for other substances, 7.6 percent of people said they’d ever been harmed by others’ use of opioids, while 8.3 percent reported ever experiencing harm from unspecified “other” drugs.
When respondents were asked about just the past 12-month period, alcohol still caused the most secondhand harm, with 6.2 percent of people saying they’d been harmed by others’ use. Next were other drugs (2.2 percent), opioids (2.0 percent) and then cannabis (1.8 percent).
“Our estimates for secondhand drug harms were lower than anticipated given the ongoing opioid overdose crisis and the trend toward recreational cannabis legalization,” the authors from the Alcohol Research Group and RTI International wrote in the study, which was published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.
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