Science & Health
2 In 3 Americans Who Use Marijuana Say It Helps Them Sleep Better, New Survey Shows
About 2 in 3 Americans who use marijuana say it improves their sleep, according to a new survey from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM).
The poll asked 2,003 American adults about their cannabis use and its sleep impacts.
Overall, about 33 percent of respondents said marijuana makes their quality of sleep “significantly” or “slightly” better, compared to 11 percent who said it has “no impact” and 8 percent who reported significantly or slightly worse sleep outcomes. The remaining 47 percent said they don’t use cannabis at all.
Consolidating the results to include only self-reported cannabis consumers, about 64 percent said using marijuana improved their sleep either significantly (35 percent) or slightly (29 percent). By contrast, 21 percent of cannabis users said it had no impact, while a total of 16 percent said it worsened sleep.
The survey further found that respondents between the ages of 25 and 44 were most likely to find marijuana improved their sleep, and older Americans were generally less likely to report using cannabis in the first place.
Men were more likely than women to say that using marijuana helps them sleep better.
“While many states now allow the recreational and medical use of marijuana, its impact on sleep is multi-faceted,” Kannan Ramar, former president of AASM, said in a press release. He added that cannabis can be linked to “daytime sleepiness” and conditions such as sleep disruption.
“Sleep is essential to health, so it is important to talk to a healthcare professional about any ongoing sleep concerns,” he said. “Sleep specialists can provide evidence-based treatments for anyone who has insomnia or another sleep disorder.”
The poll—which was conducted from June 5-13, 2025 and had a +/-2 percentage point margin of error—is far from the first to indicate that marijuana can effectively help people with sleep issues.
For example, using medical marijuana appears to help people reduce the use of medications, including sleeping aids, according to a recent study involving more than 3,500 patients. They also experience far fewer negative side effects after switching to cannabis from prescription drugs.
Another study that looked at adults who drink cannabis-infused beverages also found improvements in overall wellbeing and sleep, as well as reductions in pain, stress, depression and anxiety.
A 2025 study on the use of medical marijuana by older patients—age 50 and above—concluded that “cannabis seemed to be a safe and effective treatment” for sleep disorders, pain and other conditions.
About 16 percent of Americans aged 21 and older say they use cannabis as a sleep aid, according to a separate industry-backed survey from last year. That makes marijuana more popular for sleep than prescription sleep aids (12 percent) or alcohol (11 percent), but still not quite as common as using supplements (26 percent) or over-the-counter sleep aids (19 percent).
A pair of 2024 studies found that both older medical marijuana patients as well as people with fibromyalgia reported that cannabis improved their sleep.
A different study that year from the retirement group AARP found that marijuana use by older people in the U.S. has nearly doubled, with better sleep as among the most frequently cited reasons.
Another industry-backed survey last year found that an oral CBD solution effectively treated mild to moderate anxiety, as well as associated depression and poor sleep quality, with no serious adverse events observed.
A study published in 2024, meanwhile, found that using marijuana before sleep has minimal if any effect on a range of performance measures the next day, including simulated driving, cognitive and psychomotor function tasks, subjective effects and mood.
In 2023, a federally funded study found that people with anxiety experienced better quality sleep on days when they used marijuana compared to days when they used alcohol or nothing at all.
Separate studies in 2019, meanwhile, found that fewer people purchased over-the-counter (OTC) sleep medications when they had legal access to cannabis and that many adult-use consumers at the time said they used marijuana for the same reasons medical cannabis patients did: to help with pain and sleep.
