More DEA Lies: 95% of Americans Do Not Use Drugs

The U.S. Government has never really been known for their honesty, but I find it interesting to poke at their statements, especially in the area of marijuana. I like to look into their claims anyway. Makes for decent blogging.

As per the DEA:

Ninety-five percent of Americans do not use drugs.

Source

Keep in mind that the government is all too happy to lump marijuana in with other substances when they use the word “drugs,” but they disregard FDA approved drugs like Tylenol (which can actually kill a person). If you get semantic about it, there are hardly any Americans at all that “don’t use drugs.”

And, even in this document the DEA likes to use the word “drugs,” but calls out marijuana prominently. Leaving most readers to think that this is really only about marijuana; in which case their numbers are extremely off base. Believe it or not, there are plenty of people that use cocaine but don’t touch marijuana. This is true for many other drugs.

But that’s not what this post is about. It’s about that 95%.

At first I thought, “this is an outright lie.” But it’s not. Well, not exactly.

I thought I should look more into it just to see what the real numbers look like, and they are interesting indeed. And as a bonus, I found a new area of discussion about which I haden’t previously considered.

The Real Numbers

So let’s play with the numbers and see what we have.

The DEA says 95% of Americans don’t use drugs. Well, it turns out that more than 14% of Americans are under the age of 10. Another 4% are over the age of 80. Source

I bring these groups in as the case of a 9 year old toking up is so rare that you can completely disregard them in this case with no problems. And as for the elderly, I feel that life changes are pretty drastic in such that the availability, desire and opportunity to smoke weed is rather slim.

That leaves us with a total of 18% of Americans that are very unlikely to currently/regularly use marijuana.

This leaves us with an “eligible” 82% of the population. Already 95% doesn’t work well with reality.

What They Meant To Say

What they likely meant to say was:

95% of Americans aged 12 and older do not currently use marijuana.

Which would be closer to the truth (though still inaccurate). As of 2007 5.8% of Americans aged 12 and older have used marijuana in the last month (remember, we aren’t looking at other “drugs”). And this is only in the last month. Source

We see a total of just over 10% of Americans 12 and older that have used marijuana in the past year, and 40.6% in their lifetime.

And these are numbers from the government themselves.

When We Talk Numbers

Remember that these are surveys. Surveys that are in place by the government. I’m not saying they play with the numbers directly, but keep in mine 2 things.

First, if a cop asked you if you smoked marijuana recently, would you tell him “yes?” When people are approached by the government to answer such questions, they are naturally hesitant to give a real answer.

Second, I know for a fact that no government organization has ever asked these questions of me. Have they asked you?

The funny thing about polls and surveys is that you can continue them for so long as you have not obtained a desired number; or cease them once you have.

Let’s say you have 100 people you can poll. In reality 25% of them are left-handed. That leaves 75% who are right-handed. But you don’t know this yet. You haven’t asked them all.

You are pressed for time so you decide to ask 10 people which of their hands is dominant. 7 of them are left-handed, 3 are right-handed. Now you know, that 70% of the people surveyed are left-handed. Now pretend you need to ask 304 million people the same question.

I’m pretty sure I rest my case on that one. Or maybe I’m the dummy.

In Case You Haven’t Heard, The Economy Sucks

Now that we’ve seen how that 95% is almost a made-up number, I want to share an interesting thought with you.

When I was going through these numbers I noticed a huge decrease in use between lifetime, past year and past month users.

For example, in 2007 42% of Americans aged 26 or older reported use at least once in their lifetime. But, that number drops to 6.8% in the last year, and further to 3.9% in the last month. That’s a pretty big drop.

You could think that “hey, that shows that a lot of people try it, but don’t get hooked.” Which is a true statment. But still, that’s a really large drop.

You could also say that “I wouldn’t mind telling a cop I smoke weed when I was a kid, but I’m not fessing to doing it yesterday. What’s he gonna do?” Again, a justifiable assumption.

But as I was expressing my curiousity to a friend, he reminded me of something.

“Yeah, that’s about when the economy started to go to shit,” he so elequently stated. “How many people lost jobs and had to clean up for a drug test?”

Well, I never thought about that. I can’t say for sure that this is indeed the case, but it would make perfect sense that a ton of people lost jobs over the last few years and needed to accommodate this incredibly rediculous law in order to take care of their responsibilities (which an amazing amount of “stoners” do).

So, I leave you with that for this Friday. Next week I’m going to post on some really interesting stuff I received about Marinol. Stay tuned.