BROOKLINE, Mass. (AP) — For the past several years, 75-year-old Miguel Laboy has smoked a joint with his coffee every morning. He tells himself he won’t start tomorrow the same way, but he usually does.
“You know what bothers me? To have cannabis on my mind the first thing in the morning,” he said, sparking a blunt in his Brookline, Massachusetts, apartment. “I’d like to get up one day and not smoke. But you see how that’s going.”
Since legalization and commercialization, daily cannabis use has become a defining and often invisible part of many people’s lives. High-potency vapes and concentrates now dominate the market, and doctors say they can blur the line between relief and dependence over time so that users don’t notice the shift. Across the country, people who turned to cannabis for help are finding it harder to put down.
Overall, alcohol remains more widely used than cannabis. But starting in 2022, the number of daily cannabis users in the U.S. surpassed that of daily drinkers a major shift in American habits.
Researchers say the rise has unfolded alongside products that contain far more THC than the marijuana of past decades, including vape oils and concentrates that can reach 80% to 95% THC. Massachusetts, like most states, sets no limit on how strong these products can be.
Doctors warn that daily, high-potency use can cloud memory, disturb sleep, intensify anxiety or depression and trigger addiction in ways earlier generations didn’t encounter. Many who develop cannabis use disorder say it’s hard to recognize the signs because of the widespread belief that marijuana isn’t addictive.
Laboy, a retired chef, began seeing a substance-use counselor after telling his doctor he felt depressed, unmotivated and increasingly isolated as his drinking and cannabis use escalated.
Naltrexone helped him quit alcohol, but he hasn’t found a way to quit marijuana. Unlike alcohol and opioids, there is no FDA-approved medication to treat cannabis addiction, though research is underway.
Laboy, who first smoked at 18, said marijuana has long soothed symptoms tied to undiagnosed ADHD, childhood trauma and painful experiences including cancer treatment and his son’s death. Through decades in restaurant kitchens, he considered himself a “functional pothead.”
Lately, though, his use has become compulsive. After retiring, he began vaping 85% THC cartridges.