3 ms·

I suppose you’re excluding alcohol from that pronouncement?

by bdhess 8y ago

Vadoff 8y ago
And caffeine
xoa 8y ago
Your question really made me curious so I looked it up, the NIH keeps extensive records about this sort of thing. This is America only of course, which looks to be in the top third or so worldwide based on the WHO lists ("Western" countries or those with colonization history there and Russia seem to be higher then southern Asian and African countries in general). But in America while a majority use it, it's still lower then I actually expected digging into the definitions. In the surveys apparently 56% of Americans reported consuming alcohol, any whatsoever, in the previous month, 70% in the previous year, and 86% tried it at some point in their lifetimes. But it's hard to see "tried once in their life" or even "a few times a year" as really falling in an equivalent "junkie" category, so I looked for "heavy drinking" which they defined as "4-5 or more drinks in 2 hours" a few days in a month, where a "drink" is a standardized measurement of ~14 grams of pure alcohol, equivalent to a single 12 oz 5% beer = 5 oz of 12% wine = 1.5 oz of 40% spirits (etc, whatever the percentage is). Just 7% of Americans reported heavy drinking in the previous month. Alcohol is regulated and taxed, but even so beer & wine at least is pretty trivial for adults to legally acquire in most of the country and relatively cheap spirits (like very low quality vodka) as well. I don't at all want to understate the harm of alcohol abuse, it's very real (and of course can extend beyond drinkers themselves due to their actions). Even so it seems like "make everyone into a junkie" would not be borne out by legalized alcohol. Based on popular culture it's easy to assume drinking is more prevalent to a higher degree then it is, at least personally I would not have guessed that heavy drinking was only single digit percentages here. It looks like, as in other areas, there is a strongly non-linear curve function in the population where relatively small percentages form an inordinate part of consumption. If that's the case for marijuana as well then it'd suggest we could get far more efficient harm reduction by general legalization focusing limited resources on that smaller slice?

I suppose you’re excluding alcohol from that pronouncement?

by bdhess 8y ago

I suppose you’re excluding alcohol from that pronouncement?

Vadoff 8y ago

And caffeine

xoa 8y ago

Your question really made me curious so I looked it up, the NIH keeps extensive records about this sort of thing. This is America only of course, which looks to be in the top third or so worldwide based on the WHO lists ("Western" countries or those with colonization history there and Russia seem to be higher then southern Asian and African countries in general). But in America while a majority use it, it's still lower then I actually expected digging into the definitions. In the surveys apparently 56% of Americans reported consuming alcohol, any whatsoever, in the previous month, 70% in the previous year, and 86% tried it at some point in their lifetimes. But it's hard to see "tried once in their life" or even "a few times a year" as really falling in an equivalent "junkie" category, so I looked for "heavy drinking" which they defined as "4-5 or more drinks in 2 hours" a few days in a month, where a "drink" is a standardized measurement of ~14 grams of pure alcohol, equivalent to a single 12 oz 5% beer = 5 oz of 12% wine = 1.5 oz of 40% spirits (etc, whatever the percentage is). Just 7% of Americans reported heavy drinking in the previous month. Alcohol is regulated and taxed, but even so beer & wine at least is pretty trivial for adults to legally acquire in most of the country and relatively cheap spirits (like very low quality vodka) as well. I don't at all want to understate the harm of alcohol abuse, it's very real (and of course can extend beyond drinkers themselves due to their actions). Even so it seems like "make everyone into a junkie" would not be borne out by legalized alcohol. Based on popular culture it's easy to assume drinking is more prevalent to a higher degree then it is, at least personally I would not have guessed that heavy drinking was only single digit percentages here. It looks like, as in other areas, there is a strongly non-linear curve function in the population where relatively small percentages form an inordinate part of consumption. If that's the case for marijuana as well then it'd suggest we could get far more efficient harm reduction by general legalization focusing limited resources on that smaller slice?