Why More Teenage Girls Than Boys Now Use Marijuana
For the first time, more girls than boys are smoking and vaping marijuana.
Updated August 29, 2025 | Reviewed by Hara Estroff Marano
For the first time in 50 years of keeping track, in 2024, teen girls in the U.S. used significantly more marijuana than boys in every grade. What's driving the shift?
The much higher percentages of girls vaping marijuana may explain part of the difference. Boys are still smoking more cigarettes than girls, while girls tend to be more attracted to vaping marijuana as well as to vaping nicotine. Vaping devices are often clearly marketed toward girls, offered in rainbow colors or in flavors like coconut or mango.
Girls: The New Pot Smokers?
Here's what the 2024 Monitoring the Future (MTF) report shows about girls vs. boys:
"Prevalence levels for vaping nicotine and vaping marijuana were higher for females than for males in all three grades for lifetime, past 12-month, and past 30-day use."
Press releases surrounding the report emphasized historic reductions in alcohol use—but not the marijuana reversal. Researchers at the National Institutes of Health and the University of Michigan, who conducted the study, were careful not to overinterpret subgroup patterns until confirmed as a trend. Nevertheless, I anticipate that such analyses will soon appear in publications like Pediatrics and JAMA Psychiatry .
Official MTF data show that girls lead boys in marijuana vaping, in lifetime, annual, and past-month prevalence. The gender reversal is statistically meaningful. It’s also highly relevant for physicians, educators, and public health officials.
In general, much higher proportions of males are involved in drug use, especially heavy use. Even in the most recent MTF survey, males had higher rates of use of nearly all drugs other than marijuana, at least by 12th grade.
Seizure of E-Cigarettes
There’s big bucks in vaping while laws are skirted. On May 22, 2025, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) seized almost two million illegal units of e-cigarettes with an estimated value of about $34 million. It seems likely that many of the units would have ended up in the hands of teenagers.
Girls might favor vapes because not only do they come in attractive packaging, but they also don’t smell like marijuana smoke. Girls also favor vaping nicotine over boys, probably for similar reasons.
Male adolescents consistently report higher lifetime cigarette use across all grades. Boys are more likely to consume nicotine in cigarettes than in vapes. And historically—for 49 of the last 50 years!—boys have been more likely than girls to use cannabis.
The new data on girls surpassing boys in marijuana use suggests a gender inversion with substantial public health implications. Further, the gender gap widens with grade level. By 12th grade, female prevalence is substantially higher, suggesting increasing initiation among girls during high school or greater persistence in use than among boys.
The coming years will reveal whether males return to higher marijuana prevalence. Public health officials and clinicians need to recognize emerging patterns early because prevention and intervention depend on knowing who’s most at risk.
Another part of the reason that girls have begun using so much more marijuana than boys may be sex differences in the brain's natural endogenous cannabinoid system, the endocannabinoid system (ECS). The differences could make cannabis more reinforcing or differently experienced by females.
The density of cannabinoid receptors tends to be greater in specific brain regions of females (hippocampus, striatum, amygdala), which may also enhance sensitivity to marijuana's psychoactive compound, tetrahydrocannabinol. In addition, the female hormone estradiol can increase dopamine release in response to THC, further amplifying reward.
The cannabinoid-dopamine connection translates into faster acquisition of self-administration of THC (and nicotine, cocaine, etc.), suggesting greater vulnerability to reinforcement and dependence. The biological differences likely lead to quicker transition from experimentation to regular use for females, both for relief from withdrawal and management of negative affect.
Having a chic alternative in vaping is especially relevant for girls, who have historically avoided cigarette smoking due to image concerns. Many teens also believe vaping is safer than smoking, possibly encouraging intake among girls who avoided smoking due to stigma or health concerns. But the health risks of vaping are not fully known and probably won’t be known for several years. In the meantime, the last thing we need is for our girls—or boys!—to vape nicotine, marijuana, or anything else.
In many subcultures, cannabis use has become normalized, even glamorized, with far less stigma for girls than in previous generations. Some adolescent girls use cannabis to manage appetite , anxiety , mood, or sleep; teenage girls also report higher rates of anxiety and depression than boys. Vaping marijuana may serve as a self- medication coping mechanism.
By mid- adolescence (around age 14-15), girls are about twice as likely as boys to report depression or anxiety. According to the Centers for Disease Control Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS, 2023), 57 percent of high school girls reported persistent sadness/hopelessness (vs. 29 percent of boys), and 30 percent of girls seriously considered suicide (vs. 14 percent of boys).
Evidence for Higher Mental Health Burdens in Adolescent Girls
As medical marijuana is increasingly adopted by states—it is currently approved in 40 of 50 states—young people may view marijuana as a self-medication coping aid. It may be seen as natural and less stigmatized than taking psychiatric medication.
As a result, girls may be turning to cannabis (especially vaping, which feels discreet) to manage anxiety, stress , or insomnia . Female adolescents often report using cannabis to feel less anxious or less sad or to sleep better, whereas boys more often cite using the drug “to get high” or “for fun.”
Adolescent girls also often cope with sexual harassment, assault, and relational aggression . Such experiences are strongly associated with higher risks for substance use as self-medication. Adolescent girls are also heavier users of social media , which studies link to body dissatisfaction, social comparison, and mood problems. Cannabis, particularly vaping, may be seen as a means of accessible relief. The combination of female psychological vulnerability and biological sensitivity may explain why girls in 2025 are now outpacing boys in cannabis use.
The new MTF findings suggest we need to reconsider prevention messaging and address perceptions about vaping, which likely resonate differently for female adolescents.
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Mark S. Gold, M.D., is a pioneering researcher, professor, and chairman of psychiatry at Yale, the University of Florida, and Washington University in St Louis.
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