3 ms·

What drugs are we talking about? I would say someone who has used a drug in the past year is a user, someone who compulsively uses or would experience withdrawa

What drugs are we talking about? I would say someone who has used a drug in the past year is a user, someone who compulsively uses or would experience withdrawal if they stopped using is an addict. I am not sure where you are getting these 'vast majority' numbers from - if you look at publicly available stats it is evidence that there is a significant proportion of people who are addicted. Look at cocaine - 4.8 million American users in last year, 1.4 million addicts - ~30% [0]. For opioids, the proportion who is addicts is even higher. We explicitly are not discussing tobacco/weed/alcohol, which have much higher non-addict uses. I guess I didn't count anabolic steroids, I am not sure what 'addiction' really means in that context. [0]: https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/cocaine/what-scope-cocaine-use-in-united-states https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/cocaine/w...

boomboomsubban 3y ago
>Look at cocaine - 4.8 million American users in last year, 1.4 million addicts - ~30% Is 70% not addicted not a "vast majority?" 50.1% would be a majority, 70% seems high enough for "vast."
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  Most drug use in America is opioids and meth both of which have higher rates of addiction. Colloquially I don't think most people would refer to 70% as a 'vast majority' or 30% as a 'tiny subset.' But if the GP meant 30-50% (when factoring in other drugs) as a 'tiny subset', then I guess we don't disagree :) See usage notes [0] [0]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vast_majority https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vast_majority
  - boomboomsubban 3y ago
    A quick search shows my personal definition of "vast majority" and "overwhelming majority" may be reversed. I would consider overwhelming>vast, so 70% is fine for vast but apparently I'm wrong.
fullspectrumdev 3y ago
I mean, I’d consider 70% to be the vast majority, and I also suspect there’s more than 4.8 million cocaine users in the US in the last year. Excluding commonly used drugs like alcohol, weed or tobacco doesn’t seem very useful, but I can see why. Tobacco being included would massively spike the addict numbers, alcohol and weed would drop them.

boomboomsubban 3y ago

>Look at cocaine - 4.8 million American users in last year, 1.4 million addicts - ~30% Is 70% not addicted not a "vast majority?" 50.1% would be a majority, 70% seems high enough for "vast."

whimsicalism 3y ago
Most drug use in America is opioids and meth both of which have higher rates of addiction. Colloquially I don't think most people would refer to 70% as a 'vast majority' or 30% as a 'tiny subset.' But if the GP meant 30-50% (when factoring in other drugs) as a 'tiny subset', then I guess we don't disagree :) See usage notes [0] [0]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vast_majority https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vast_majority
- boomboomsubban 3y ago
  A quick search shows my personal definition of "vast majority" and "overwhelming majority" may be reversed. I would consider overwhelming>vast, so 70% is fine for vast but apparently I'm wrong.

fullspectrumdev 3y ago

I mean, I’d consider 70% to be the vast majority, and I also suspect there’s more than 4.8 million cocaine users in the US in the last year. Excluding commonly used drugs like alcohol, weed or tobacco doesn’t seem very useful, but I can see why. Tobacco being included would massively spike the addict numbers, alcohol and weed would drop them.