I am always fascinated by the national surveys that rank cities and states, like the recent rankings of healthy and unhealthy cities for women done recently by Self Magazine and the safest place to raise a child by Safe Kids USA. Well, now it looks like Uncle Sam has released the new report ranking states by the sordid issue of drug use, and its occasional counterpart mental health. The Department of Health and Human Services issued a report of substance abuse and mental health based on a survey of 136,110 people completed in 2005 and 2006. North Dakota was the cleanest state in a couple of instances, but depression and drug use superlatives can be found all across the map of these United States.
Want to see if your state ranks the highest in marijuana abuse or lowest in depression rates? Then read more.
When asked if they had used illicit drugs during the previous month, the highest number of positive responses came from Rhode Island, with 11.2% of respondents answering yes. North Dakota had the lowest percentage of people reporting use of the illicit drug.
The citizens of Vermont reported the highest percentage of marijuana use and Utah reported the lowest, in the month prior to answering the survey. Seems like Vermont* might be earning its nickname of the Green Mountain State for more than one reason since 9.7 percent of its citizen participating in the survey reported smoking the green bud compared with Utah's citizenry with only 4.3 percent answering positive to the question of using marijuana.
Cocaine use was reported by 2.4 percent of all participants with rates being highest in Washington, D.C. with 4.9 percent and lowest in North Dakota with only 1.6 percent.
On the mental health front, Nevada had the highest rate of reported depression with 9.4 percent and Hawaii had the lowest adult depression rate of 5 percent.
If you are interested in further reading, the full report is available on the Health and Human Services website.
*Vermont was also ranked number one in the Summer Safety Report. Go figure!
Finesse
meth addiction is terrible in the northwest.
1Interesting...
2Interesting map. I'd like to see more a breakdown into cities too. Meth is on the rise, has been for a couple years. CA has it bad too.
3Now if we could just start focusing more on preventative measures (not lame DARE programs either) and treating addiction instead of criminalizing it.
im surprised texas isn't on there as a top offender. but since four out of the top six fattest cities in america are here our drug of choice is food.
4I agree with you Ecann. I was expecting Texas to be up there. We do love our food down here!
5i am suprised by a lot of this. good info!
6this is crazy!
7Rhode Island, not RhodeS
8NLM1212 - Thanks for catching that
9I'm not surprised by Vermont - I went to UVM and my cousin joked around asking "when you walked on campus for the first time, did they hand you a pair of birkenstocks and a bag of weed?" I still live here and yeah, lots of people still smoke, even those like 10 years out of college. Smoking pot in college I can understand, but once you graduate, get a real job, and start a family, it's time to be all done with that kind of stuff. Just my opinion.
10Are the white states just abusing "legal" drugs instead? That would be interesting to find out.
11Us northerners have got to get through these never-ending winters somehow
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