Do New Yorkers consume cannabis and coffee at equal rates?

Cannabis has been legal for medical purposes in New York state since 2016, and it became legal for recreational use since then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation in 2021.

Coffee, on the other hand, has been legal for centuries. 

Has cannabis use in New York state caught up to coffee in just a couple years?

That’s what John Kagia, acting executive director for the New York’s Office of Cannabis Management, said in an April 2 interview with Politico, for an article marking the law’s fifth anniversary.

"The number of New Yorkers who consume cannabis daily or near daily is the same as the number of New Yorkers who buy coffee from a coffee shop daily or near daily — 1.2-plus million people," Kagia said.

Kagia’s office told PolitiFact New York that the 1.2 million figure came from the New York State Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, an annual telephone survey of adults developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The survey found that in New York, 6.7% of adults aged 21 or older reported consuming cannabis daily or near daily. 

Applying that 6.7% figure to New York’s population of slightly over 20 million, and adjusting for the percentage of the population that is 21 or over, puts the figure at roughly 1.2 million.

But what about coffee drinkers? That’s less clear.

Kagia’s office told PolitiFact New York that they were relying on a 2024 study conducted by Drive Research that found that 8% of Americans said they buy coffee from a coffee shop every day. 

"It’s in the same ballpark as the percentage of Americans who grab a coffee on the way to work each day," said the Office of Cannabis Management’s chief medical officer, Dr. June Chin.

But that study does not address whether New Yorkers’ coffee behavior matches the nation. If the percentage holds for New Yorkers, that means about 1.6 million buy coffee outside their home nearly every day.

Other research suggests that consumption of store-bought cups of coffee is higher than cannabis use.

A 2018 Siena College Research Institute poll found that 48% of New York state adults said they drink coffee daily (42%) or five or six days a week (6%).

That’s a rate seven times higher than daily cannabis users, according to the more recent survey. However, the Siena College question did not ask the respondents whether they "buy coffee from a coffee shop" — as Kagia’s comparison phrased it — or made their own cup at home.

In June 2025, the publication Coffee Intelligence reported that 70% of customers were brewing their own cups at home. If that percentage held for New York state, then about 14% of the Siena poll’s respondents would be drinking coffee from outside their house five to seven times a week.

That would be about 2.8 million New Yorkers, or more than twice the level of daily or near-daily cannabis use reported in the CDC-designed survey.

Separately, the National Coffee Association found a higher percentage; the group’s 2026 national study found that 66% of Americans drink coffee daily. Using the same percentage of people buying their coffee at stores as Coffee Intelligence found, that would be nearly 20% buying coffee every day, or about 4 million, more than three times as high as the rate for cannabis.

"While there may be some estimates out there, this seems like a very difficult thing to calculate," said Mason Tvert, a marijuana rights activist and a partner at the consulting firm Strategies 64 in Denver. 

Ironically, Tvert said, the cannabis-coffee comparison has a long history among anti-cannabis activists, of which Kagia is not one. Cannabis critics, Tvert said, frequently claim that jurisdictions have more marijuana stores or dispensaries than Starbucks outlets as a way of saying cannabis sales have spiraled out of control.

Our ruling

Kagia said, "The number of New Yorkers who consume cannabis daily or near daily is the same as the number of New Yorkers who buy coffee from a coffee shop daily or near daily — 1.2-plus million people."

A 2024 survey showed that about 1.2 million New Yorkers age 21 and older consume cannabis daily or near daily. But the estimates of New Yorkers who buy coffee daily are all higher, some significantly so. In addition, estimating New Yorkers’ coffee patterns is tricky because most data is national, not state-level.

The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, so we rate it Mostly False.