National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH)

The feds conduct an annual survey to find out how many people use drugs and how many people are mentally disturbed.  The link goes to the highlights of the survey.  The results are interesting, but because it’s a survey, I wonder how accurate it is.

This data has been collected for almost 50 years, and we learn that this year, more people use marijuana, than use cigarettes or alcohol.  From context, marijuana = THC marijuana and not CBD oil.  Cigarettes = tobacco products, but not tobacco-free nicotine products.

l am no expert.

I’ve smoked pot less than a dozen times.  My reasoning is that I am naturally lethargic, so don’t an assist.  Several friends are dedicated pot smokers.  

I have never smoked a cigarette in my life because inhaling hot smoke is uncomfortable and unhealthy.  I don’t know if it’s still true, but at one time, most fun young women had a cigarette when they went to a bar.  I have puffed a cigarette a few times to poke fun at my lady friends at parties. 

In my early fifties, I felt a new vice would was needed.  I took up snus.  That is Scandinavian pouch tobacco that’s been used for centuries without detrimental health effects.

I drink more than I think.  Some years ago, I bet a strapping young Italian friend that he drank more than I did.  For a couple of weeks, we tallied each drink.  Between movie nights and teacher happy hours, I was polishing off a six pack per week.  That was more drinks that I had estimated and more than my buddy.

Veteran pot smokers are interesting because until recently, getting marijuana required interacting with criminals and using a product of unknown origin or ingredients.  That seems risky in an age when people want to know the name of the cow that was butchered to produce their steak.

Pot smokers are more evangelistic than Christians.  Even Jehovah Witnesses take no for an answer, but weed friends keep offering.  They don’t insist or pressure, but it feels like a person who declines to smoke is invalidating their lifestyle.  

Marijuana can lead a few people to psychosis, but for most users, it seems to lull them into comfortable unreliability.  That may be confirmation bias, but it seems like veteran pot smokers let some tasks linger.  Inhaling pot smoke isn’t good for the lungs.

Smoking cigarettes looks cool.  Smokers inhale all sorts of compounds, and over time, that can damage the smoker’s health.  Vaping looks sneaky and furtive.  Snus is undetectable.  Nicotine is an addictive drug that doesn’t seem to be unhealthy and has beneficial neurologic effects.  It’s difficult to abuse nicotine because too much makes a person nauseated.

Alcohol offers a wide variety of uses.  A person interested in a technical hobby can be a brewer, winemaker or distiller.  Alcohol can be a souvenir, investment or gift.  Alcohol has a narrow window of efficacy.  One or two beers in an hour can relax me, but more makes me stupid.  A drink or two per day has no negative health effects, but people who can’t stop at that can screw up their lives pretty easily.

The graph is interesting, but it shows people who had a drink, smoked cigarettes or smoked pot, almost daily.  That’s defined as one instance per day, for 20 days out of a month.  Tobacco use is several times, every day.  I drink at social events, which is maybe once per week.  Pot smokers vary more widely.  

The comments on Twitter were interesting.  Here are a few, pasted in, rather than linked, for convenience.