FEAR AND LOATHING IN THE MIDWEST

The Associated Press announced Monday that the Midwest wears the nation's
crooked and frequently dropped Binge Drinking crown, with some of the
highest rates of marathon drinking in the Union. But before you start
blaming college students for everything, note that North Dakota has the
highest rate of all.

According to the 2003 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 31 percent of
residents 12 and older - let me repeat that: 12 and older - reported
drinking more than five drinks in a single sitting at least once in the
last month. Must be some rough middle schools in the N.D. (The national
average, according to data released last September, is 23 percent.) The
survey also reported that although Oregon had a relatively low 20.5 percent
binge drinking population, it had one of the highest populations of pot
smokers: About 9 percent of ... Oregonites? Oregonians? Oregonos? age 12
and older toked up in 2003. New Hampshire, with just a single percentage
point over Oregon, won the five-pointed Pot Smoking award.

Personally, I found this surprising. The highest rate of marijuana smoking
in the nation is 10 percent? Including the middle school crowd? Seriously?
But as the article continued, this started to make sense: "National results
released in September found that fewer American youths were using
marijuana, LSD and Ecstasy, but more were abusing prescription drugs. The
survey also found that youths and young adults were more aware of the risks
of using pot."

As a card-carrying "young adult," I would say that's pretty accurate. I
could probably get ahold of some Percocets or Ativans or Luminals or any
number of antidepressants in a matter of hours, but I honestly can't
remember the last time anybody offered me a hit off their pipe. (Just
typing that feels a little strange. "Hit off their pipe"? Is that even how
you say that anymore?) What the article doesn't mention, unfortunately, is
the prevalence of methamphetamine. Easily and cheaply made on American
soil, powerfully addictive, and exponentially tolerable (that is, you need
more and more to get high every time you use it), meth is a drug dealer's
dream come true. And it shows: The fact sheet on the 2003 survey (available
on the White House Drug Policy Web site) gives marijuana most of the ink,
reporting only that meth use nationwide is "down slightly" from 0.9 percent
to 0.7 percent - or 600,000 "past month users," as the survey's press
release diplomatically calculates it. This would explain why the subsequent
news coverage overwhelmingly fails to mention meth.

But what neither the fact sheet nor the press release report is the
survey's finding that "Lifetime use of methamphetamines was reported by
12.3 million (5.2 percent of the population)." That's up from 9.4 million
in 1999, which itself was triple the rate of 1994. Meth abuse, in other
words, which carries a mortality rate of approximately 40 percent, has
quadrupled over the past 10 years.

Prescription drug use "nonmedically at least once in (a) lifetime," which
you'll note was reported by the press, stands at 8.8 percent. Strange.