My Own Political Party

The baby boomers are screwing up all the drug use trends charts. Why? Instead of drug use decreasing as they get older, drug use shows an increase. In 2001, 20% of 12-17 year olds used illicit drugs in the past year. Compare this to a high of 25% in 1979 and a low of 12% in 1993. I wonder what we were doing differently in 1993?

For older Americans (35 and older), 6.3% claimed to have used drugs in the past year in 2001. The low was in 1979, when only 3.9% reported using drugs.

When asked if you have ever used drugs, 28.4% of 12-17 year olds claimed that they had. Compare this to 55.6% of 18-25 year olds, 53.3% of 26-34 year olds and 38.4% of 35 and older.

Combining all ages together, 41.7% of the population has, at least one, used illicit drugs. Does this mean that we have a bunch of addicts out there that should be attending drug rehabs? No. This data only represents if drugs were ever used. Using drugs only once would put you on the list. The more telling number is 7.1% of all ages have used illicit drugs in the past 30 days which ruffly equates to 20 million people!