Marijuana Use Now Outpaces Cigarettes

[canyonwalker]

I've seen a few articles in my newsfeed today that cigarette smoking is down and marijuana use is up in the US... so much so that the latter now outnumbers the former. Rather than cite the articles here I figured I'd go the the source. The source is a Gallup publication, "Americans and the Future of Cigarettes, Marijuana, Alcohol" published 26 Aug 2022 from a poll conducted in July. I read that study and the more detailed breakouts it links to. (Yes, I just cited primary source documents to support my opinion online. That's how I roll!)

One Gallup survey question was, "Have you, yourself, smoked any cigarettes in the past week?" A record low of 11% answered yes. That's a big drop from 16% a year earlier and rates of 40%+ five decades ago.

Some news articles reporting this Gallup release cross reference it with another recent publication, "Global Smoking Report" from NiceRx, to show how smoking rates vary by state within the US. (It's not a primary source, per se, but it does disclose its methods and sources— which include the World Health Organization and Our World In Data.) This report finds that, globally, the smoking rate is 22.3%. Within the US it breaks down smoking rates by state. The smokiest state is West Virginia, with a smoking rate of nearly 24%. Kentucky is only a hair behind at #2. The least smoky state is Utah, at 7.9%. Gotta love the Mormon faith that abjures alcohol, tobacco, and even caffeine! The second least smoky state is California, with a smoker rate of 10%.

Back to the Gallup poll and the headline about pot use overtaking cigs. While cigarette smoking has dropped to 11%, the same survey found that 16% have used marijuana recently. And that's despite marijuana being not only illegal at the federal level but also classified as a Schedule I drug— nominally the most dangerous and addictive drugs, with a "high potential for abuse". 🙄 I'm not a marijuana advocate, but there's no medical evidence pot belongs in the same category as heroin. I mean, even fentanyl, about which there's been much wailing and gnashing of teeth the past several years for its highly addictive nature and mortal danger, is only a Schedule II drug (primary source document again).

Comments

[some_other_dave]

The history of marijuana's legal status is ... kind of chilling. It's pretty tied in with systemic and individual racism, among other things.

[canyonwalker]

Great point. I was going to mention that in my main blog entry but deleted it from a draft because I didn't find factual sources to support it in time and didn't want to ruin my whole "Primary Source Documents!!!" roll. What I've heard from speakers on the topic is that pot's classification as a Schedule I controlled substance, in the same category as heroin, dates to the Nixon administration. Nixon saw that marijuana use was popular among two groups he disliked, young progressive protestors of the Vietnam war and young progressive Black civil rights activists, and put his thumb on the scale to over-criminalize it so enforcement and social stigma could be used as weapons against these groups. Like I said, my sourcing for that is thin. What's your understanding?

[ojuang.livejournal.com]

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-science-behind-the-dea-s-long-war-on-marijuana/

[canyonwalker]

Cool, thanks! Well, not cool, as it is deliberate dishonesty by government officials at the highest levels, but it's good to see the explanation I wrote above is substantiated by people who were in the room where it happened.

[sorcyress]

Speaking of "shouldn't be schedule 1" I was going to come gnash my teeth about how my ADHD meds are schedule 1 and any ADHDer will assure you that the addiction is totally overrun by the difficulty of remembering to take the damn things in the first place.

But in the spirit of your post, I looked it up, and they're actually schedule 2. So thank you for the reminder to cite one's sources!

(but seriously, if this stuff was actually addictive to me, maybe I would be able to remember to take it every day!)

~Sor

[canyonwalker]

On the topic of addiction, since you mentioned it.... It's misleading that one of the standard definitions of addiction is, "I feel I can't function normally without this." That describes everyone with a severe chronic problems who takes prescription drugs to treat it! But then people go tut-tutting someone who has, say, chronic pain, for being "dependent" on painkillers. Fool, you're dependent on air with 21% oxygen, how about you wean off that, too?