Trends in cannabis use among U.S. adults amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on mental health and alcohol use in the US, however there is little research on its impacts on cannabis use. Considering the role of cannabis as a coping strategy or self-medicating behavior, there is a need to understand how individuals who use cannabis have adapted their use amid the pandemic. Therefore, this study examined changes in self-reported cannabis use among US adults in the context of COVID-19 pandemic by (1) describing trends of use during the first 8 months of the pandemic among adults who used cannabis in this period; and (2) characterizing trends of use within sociodemographic subgroups and by state cannabis policy status. METHODS: The sample consisted of 1,761 US adults who used cannabis at least once during the 8-month study period from the nationally representative Understanding America Study. Linear mixed-effect models were used to model changes in the number of days of past-week cannabis use across 16 waves from March 10, 2020, to November 11, 2020. RESULTS: Compared to early March, the number of days cannabis was used per week was significantly higher at the start of April (ß=0.11, 95% CI=0.03, 0.18) and May (ß=0.21,95% CI=0.05, 0.36). In subsequent months (June - November), the number of days of cannabis use attenuated to levels comparable to March. Trends of cannabis use across the study period generally did not differ across sociodemographic characteristics and state cannabis policy status. CONCLUSION: Though increases in use were marginal among many groups, the evolving pandemic and the growing concern for the mental health of segments of the U.S. population warrant close monitoring of coping behaviors, including substance use.

Factors associated with county-level mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The objective of this study is to determine county-level factors associated with anxiety, depression, and isolation during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This study used daily data from 23,592,355 respondents of a nationwide Facebook-based survey from April 2020 to July 2021, aggregated to the week-county level to yield 212,581 observations. Mental distress prevalences were modeled using weighted linear mixed-effects models with a county random effect. These models revealed that weekly percentages of mental distress were higher in counties with higher unemployment rates, populations, and education levels; higher percentages of females, young adults, individuals with a medical condition, and individuals very worried about their finances and COVID-19; and lower percentages of individuals who were working outside the home, living with children, without health insurance, and Black. Anxiety peaked in April 2020, depression in October 2020, and isolation in December 2020. Therefore, United States counties experienced the mental health effects of the pandemic differently dependent upon their characteristics, and mental distress prevalence varied across time.