SAMHSA Releases Annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) released the results of the 2025 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), the nation’s primary source of data on how people living in the United States report their experience with mental health, substance use, pursuit of treatment, and recovery status. This year’s survey provides five years of data to examine trends among key substance use and mental health outcomes based on self-reported responses from more than 60,000 people.

Findings from the 2025 NSDUH include:

Substance Use:

• More than half (56 percent) of people age 12 and older used tobacco, nicotine, alcohol, or an illicit drug in the past month. Most of those people were drinking alcohol.
• Among those who were currently drinking, 44 percent engaged in binge drinking over the course of the year. In the past month, 19.5 percent had binged, a decrease from nearly 22 percent in 2021.
• The percentage of people who used nicotine products largely didn’t change from 2022, the earliest year to which comparisons can be made. But among nicotine products, the percentage of people smoking cigarettes decreased across age groups while the percentage of people vaping mostly increased.
• Marijuana was the most commonly used illicit drug, with 21 percent of people using it in 2025. By comparison, just 3 percent used hallucinogens and 2 percent misused prescription opioids. The survey found no change in the number of people knowingly using illegal fentanyl at 0.3 percent.
• Forty-four million people had a substance use disorder last year. Among adults 18 and older, 54.6 million (almost 21 percent) had a mental illness.

Mental Health:

• Among adolescents aged 12 to 17 in 2025, about 1 in 5 (18 percent or 4.6 million) had moderate or severe anxiety symptoms in the past two weeks and 15.1 percent (or 3.7 million) had over the past year a major depressive episode.
• Among adults aged 18 or older in 2025, 6.6 percent (or 17.5 million) had moderate or severe symptoms of anxiety in the past two weeks.
• Among adults aged 18 or older in 2025, 20.6 percent (or 54.6 million) had any mental illness in the past year, and 6.9 percent (or 18.2 million) had a serious mental illness.
   
  

Review the entire report.