Among 3,227 US adults aged 18–34 surveyed in 2025, past-6-month cannabis use was reported by 40.5% and past-year psychedelic use by 11.9%. Psychedelics had less legalization support, less promotional and risk-message exposure, and lower social acceptability than cannabis, while being perceived as more addictive and harmful. Factors linked to both cannabis and psychedelic use included lower perceived addictiveness and harm, higher social acceptability, more adverse childhood experiences, more promotional and risk-message exposure, and higher scores on a mental health questionnaire. Greater legalization support for both substances was associated with lower perceived addictiveness and harm, higher social acceptability, and more promotional-message exposure. Message exposure may be especially important in shaping psychedelic use and legalization support.
Among a sample of young adults with high rates of past-month cannabis use, lifetime and past-year psychedelic use were 27.7% and 11.9%, respectively, with psilocybin/amanita, MDMA, and LSD being most common. Nearly half used psychedelics only for nonmedical purposes. Of those who had ever used, 26.5% had microdosed. Older age, male sex, Black race, metropolitan residence, more depressive symptoms, and more adverse childhood events were linked to lifetime use. Microdosing was associated with not having children, more anxiety, and more adverse childhood events. Mental health symptoms and adverse childhood events were also tied to higher use motives, including expansion, mood enhancement, and symptom management.
After adjusting for preexisting psychiatric conditions, the link between hallucinogen use and psychosis disappears. Among 273,466 people with substance-related hospital admissions, psychosis diagnoses were more common after hallucinogen-related admissions (16.4%) than after other substance admissions (6.6%). However, once clinical characteristics were accounted for, the increased risk became nonsignificant (hazard ratio 0.97). This suggests that observed associations between hallucinogens and psychosis are largely due to underlying mental health vulnerabilities, not a direct causal effect. The findings inform psychedelic policy by indicating that population-level data on hallucinogen safety may reflect preexisting risk factors.