WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - A new research letter in JAMA Pediatrics looked at how often young adults use cannabis or alcohol to help them fall asleep.
The study used national data from the 2022-2023 Monitoring the Future Panel Study, including 1,473 people aged 19 to 30 who had been followed since high school.
Upon analyzing the data, the researchers found that about 22 percent of young adults used cannabis or alcohol to sleep, with cannabis being more common than alcohol. Among those who had used cannabis in the past year, 41 percent said they used it to sleep, while only 9 percent of alcohol users said the same.
'Cannabis and alcohol can help initiate sleep, but regular use may be problematic,' the authors warned in the paper.
People who used cannabis almost every day were more than three times as likely to use it for sleep compared to occasional users. Women were also twice as likely as men to use cannabis for this same reason.
Meanwhile, for alcohol, people who drank daily or nearly every day were also more likely to use it to fall asleep, and Black participants were more likely than White participants to do so.
The researchers said doctors should be aware that sleep problems and substance use often go together in young adults and suggested better screening and support to reduce these critical health risk behaviors.
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