Cannabis use in Spain in figures: how to read EDADES and ESTUDES
What Spain's two big official drug surveys measure, how their prevalences and trends are interpreted, and what they do not capture.
August 3, 2026
EDADES and ESTUDES are the two official surveys with which Spain measures drug use: the first asks the general population aged 15 to 64 living in households, the second asks students aged 14 to 18 inside secondary schools. Both are coordinated by the Observatorio Español de las Drogas y las Adicciones (the Spanish observatory on drugs and addictions), which reports to the government delegation for the Plan Nacional sobre Drogas (the national drugs plan), and in both cannabis appears as the most widespread illegal substance. What they publish are not counts of consumers but self-reported prevalences within a specific time window, and from that distinction spring almost all the misunderstandings that later circulate in headlines.
What EDADES and ESTUDES are and how they differ
They are sample surveys, not administrative registers. Nobody counts consumers one by one: a large sample is selected, given an anonymous questionnaire, and from the answers an estimate is made of what percentage of the population reports having used in a given period. Both series began in the nineteen-nineties and have been repeated periodically ever since, alternating with one another. The calendar is not fixed: both the fieldwork and the publication date can shift from one edition to the next, so knowing which wave is the current one means looking at the Plan Nacional sobre Drogas website rather than assuming any regular cycle.
The essential difference lies in who is asked and where. EDADES works with the adult population at home; ESTUDES, with pupils in the classroom. That conditions everything else: the age range, the kind of questions it makes sense to put, and the conclusions that can be drawn.
| Feature | EDADES | ESTUDES |
|---|---|---|
| Population | General population living in households | Secondary education students |
| Ages | From 15 to 64 | From 14 to 18 |
| Where the questions are put | At home | At the school |
| Type of answer | Self-reported and anonymous | Self-reported and anonymous |
| Mainly used for | General trend and European comparison | Prevention indicators and age of first use |
| Built-in limitation | Leaves out anyone not living in a conventional household | Leaves out anyone no longer in school |
The main prevalences and how to read their trend
When people talk about «cannabis use in Spain» they are almost always talking about one of these figures, and they do not mean remotely the same thing. Confusing them is the most frequent error in press coverage of the subject. The reports also publish other breakdowns and cuts; these four are the ones that appear most often in summaries.
On trends there is a rule that saves a lot of grief: a sample survey has a margin of error, so the difference between two consecutive waves may be purely statistical. A series spanning several decades says far more than a jump between two points. Moreover, when the wording of a question or the fieldwork methodology changes, the earlier and later data cease to be strictly comparable, and the reports themselves flag this in their technical notes: those notes are rarely quoted and they are what determines how the series should be interpreted.
Each wave supersedes the previous one. A figure copied here would be out of date within months, and an out-of-date figure misinforms more than no figure at all. What does stay stable is the method: once you understand it, anyone can open the current report published by the Plan Nacional sobre Drogas and read the right number for themselves.
Age of first use and perception of risk
The «mean age of first use» is a retrospective figure: it is calculated by asking those who report having used at what age they first did so. That has two consequences worth bearing in mind. The first is that it describes only those who used, not the population as a whole. The second is that, being an average, it hides the distribution: a stable average can coexist with significant changes at the extremes. Movements of a tenth or two between waves are not, in themselves, news.
Perception of risk is another classic of these surveys. It does not measure the real risk of anything: it measures what proportion of respondents believe that a given pattern of use can cause problems. Alongside it, perceived availability is usually published as well, that is, how easily respondents say they could obtain the substance. Both indicators are of interest because in the prevention literature they are interpreted in relation to how use evolves, but they remain reported perceptions, not facts about the substance.
These surveys describe populations. They do not allow you to deduce what is happening to an individual, they establish no thresholds of safe use and they do not replace the assessment of a healthcare professional. Where there is concern about one's own use or that of someone close, the people to talk to are the public health system or the addiction care services of each autonomous community, not a statistical table.
It is worth adding something that separates two planes this article touches on at once: a cannabis association is not a health resource nor a therapeutic channel, and neither this text nor the directory is a route of access to treatment. Indicators of problematic use, treatment admissions or emergency attendances belong to the health sphere and are dealt with there.
Differences by sex and by territory
Both surveys break their results down by sex, and the reports publish that breakdown for each prevalence and each wave. None of those comparisons is summarised here, for the same reason that no percentages are reproduced: the difference between men and women is not a single number but a different one depending on the population surveyed, the time window and the edition, and condensing it into one sentence loses precisely what makes the data useful. Anyone who needs that reading will find it broken down in the tables of the relevant report.
The breakdown by autonomous community calls for more caution still. Splitting the sample between territories makes each sub-sample smaller and its margin of error larger: rankings of «the community where most people use» are the most fragile reading that can be made of these data, above all when the distance between positions is short. To that are added composition effects, because the communities do not have the same age structure or the same urban weighting.
There is one point worth underlining on a site like this: neither survey asks about cannabis associations. They do not measure how many there are, nor how many people are members, nor what share of consumption passes through them. The territorial distribution of the associations answers to a different logic —regional regulatory framework, municipal by-laws, local history— which we explain in the comparison by autonomous community and in the map of associations in Spain. To see what is registered city by city, the source is the directory and its index of cities, not a consumption survey.
This article describes how two statistical sources are built and how they are read. It is not legal advice or a growing guide: references to the regional or municipal regulatory framework appear solely to explain why the map of associations does not coincide with the map of self-reported use. For any specific situation, the route is a legal professional.
What these surveys do not capture
Knowing the limits of a source is part of knowing how to use it. These are the main ones:
- Under-reporting. The question concerns socially sanctioned conduct. Anonymity reduces the bias but does not remove it, and it tends to push the figures down.
- Sampling frame. Asking in households and classrooms leaves out groups with different use profiles: homeless people, the institutionalised population, those outside the education system or absent on the day of the questionnaire.
- Quantity and potency. The surveys record reported frequency, not how much or of what concentration. Any headline about «potency» resting solely on EDADES or ESTUDES is straining the source.
- Where the substance came from. The supply channel is not asked about. These data therefore say absolutely nothing about the weight of the illicit market against any other route.
- Clinical diagnosis. The screening scales these questionnaires incorporate, such as the CAST, estimate what proportion of the sample shows indications of problematic use. It is a population screening tool, not an individual diagnosis.
- Health consequences. For that there are other information systems run by the same observatory, such as the indicators on treatment admissions or hospital emergency attendances, which are published separately and answer different questions.
How to read a headline about drug use
Six checks are enough to separate a correct reading from an exaggeration.
EDADES and ESTUDES measure different populations. A figure about adolescents presented as a figure about the general population is already an error at source.
«Ever in a lifetime», «last 12 months», «last 30 days» or daily use. If the headline does not say, the headline is incomplete.
A percentage of a population and an estimate of people are different things, and converting between them adds its own margin of uncertainty.
Comparing with the previous wave is not the same as comparing with the series' all-time high. Choosing the point of comparison is the commonest way of manufacturing a trend.
If the variation is small and the sub-sample limited, the likeliest thing is that there is no real change to interpret.
A figure that does not point back to the official publication is a figure that cannot be verified. In public statistics, the primary source is always available.
With that filter it becomes easier to pick out the signals that do carry content: the trend in daily or near-daily use, the age of first use and the proportion of the population showing indications of problematic use. It also helps to keep two different conversations apart: how many people report using is one thing, and the legal framework that applies is quite another, something we explain in the article on the legality of cannabis in Spain.
Frequently asked questions
How often are EDADES and ESTUDES published?
They are published periodically and alternate with one another, but the calendar is not fixed: both the fieldwork and the publication date have shifted in different editions. The reference for knowing which is the current wave is the Plan Nacional sobre Drogas website, at the Ministry of Health, where both the full reports and the methodological notes are published.
What is the current figure for cannabis use in Spain?
It depends what is being asked: there is no «one» figure, but one for each combination of population and time window. That is precisely why no percentages are reproduced here, and because they become obsolete with each new wave. The current data are always in the latest published report.
Are these surveys any use for knowing how many people go through cannabis associations?
No. They do not ask about the supply channel or about belonging to any entity, so they allow no estimate either of the number of members or of the weight of the associative sector. If what you are after is understanding what one of these entities is and how it works, the starting point is the explanation of what a cannabis club is and the article on the cannabis social club.
Are they reliable if they are based on what people report?
They are the public source available for tracking long-run trends, and they are built with that aim: large samples, anonymous questionnaires and a question framework harmonised with the European standard, which is what makes comparison between countries possible. That does not amount to a seamless continuous series: when the wording of a question or the fieldwork procedure changes, the reports flag it in the technical notes and the stretches before and after cease to be directly comparable. To that is added the fact that every survey about socially sanctioned conduct depends on what each person decides to report. That is why they hold up better read as a long series, with the methodological notes to hand, than as a snapshot of a particular year.
