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Highest Concentration of Marijuana Smokers Near You – Check Out This Map
July 28, 2016
Take a bow, San Francisco: The Bay Area is home to the highest concentration of marijuana smokers anywhere in the country, according to new data released Tuesday by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
Every few years, SAMHSA combines data from the annual National Surveys on Drug Use and Health to derive estimates of monthly marijuana use among Americans age 12 and older. The latest cut of that data, encompassing the years 2012 to 2014, include responses from approximately 204,000 people. That huge sample makes it possible to visualize marijuana use rates with a level of detail not possible with traditional surveys.
Over 15 percent of San Francisco residents age 12 and over use marijuana monthly or more, the highest rate in the country. By contrast, the lowest use rates are in the far south of Texas, where fewer than 4 percent use monthly.
The report finds that nationally, 7.7 percent of people 12 an older — roughly 20.3 million Americans — use marijuana monthly or more. Broadly speaking, marijuana use rates are highest in the Western states and lowest in the South.
“We continue to see relatively wide variation in marijuana use” at the substate level, said Art Hughes, a SAMHSA statistician and a lead author on the report, in an interview. Overall marijuana usage rates are up by less than 1 percentage point since the period from 2010 to 2012, when SAMHSA last looked at these numbers.
Marijuana use rates have become a hot topic since Colorado first opened up its legal marijuana market in 2014, with several other states following suit. But since this data mostly covers the period before 2014, SAMHSA’s Hughes says you can’t really see many of the effects of legalization here.
Marijuana use in Colorado is relatively high, but it’s been that way for quite a while. “There are some states where we see rates on the high end even before legalization,” Hughes said.
The map above does potentially illustrate the relationship between marijuana policy making marijuana use. Different states have had radically different marijuana policies in place for years now, evident in the sometimes stark differences in use rates on either side of a state border.
Read Full Article – Source: This map shows how many people are getting high near you – The Washington Post
Image Source: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration