Loiuswu, it’s great that cannabis has eased your pain without the nasty side effects of opioids.
Dr. Sivana, I agree about the recreational pot users riding the coattails of the medicinal marijuana folks. Legalization of the former does seem to follow that of the latter.
Ref the whole drug scene here, though, it’s a cultural thing. Back in 1992 when foreigners arrived in Cambodia for the first time since 1975, you could buy bouquets of dried marijuana for cheap at little sidewalk shops and in the markets. They looked like those dried flower bouquets (minus the flowers) sold in mall gift shops back in the 1980s and were even displayed the same way, poked into a wooden lattice.
Lots of newly-arrived Westerners had a high old time. The Cambodians were shocked. In their culture (at least at that time), pot was for elderly people who had aches and pains and for prostitutes. Why prostitutes? Not sure, but I got the sense it was so they could stand their miserable lives. No young people wanted anything to do with it, any more than young people here want anything to do with Depends or would be caught dead wearing Old Man Pants.
It’s different there now — so much is, and often not for the better. Years later, yaba/yama (meth) got to be a problem there after the sweatshop factories producing cheap clothing for the American market moved in, and a worker had to work two shifts in order to barely make ends meet. Then it got to be cool for high school kids, and so did marijuana among the high school crowd. It’s all very sad.
Our current “opioid crisis” is in some ways similar to the problems with opiate addiction in the latter 1800s. As doctors brought this more and more under control by the end of the century, addiction shifted from sick old ladies to the underclass as young lower class urban males discovered the opium dens operated by Chinese immigrants, so that by the early 20th century these were the typical addicts.
Good synopsis here:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/inside-story-americas-19th-century-opiate-addiction-180967673/
Pot smoking was mostly confined to few Beatniks in urban centers in the mid 20th century. Then along came the explosion of the sex, drugs and rock and roll youth culture of the 1960s. And here we are, only now it’s sex, drugs and rap/hiphop.
There’s something seriously wrong with a culture where so many young people turn to drugs as we see today. Of course it’s not limited to youth. So many on a cocktail of prescription antidepressants, antianxiety meds and sleep aids. Others popping meth, then there’s fentanyl, and the list goes on.
In 2019, 19.3 million adults had SUD. They comprise 7.7 percent of the U.S population.2
Every year, 16 million or 6 percent of Americans over the age of 12 abuse prescription drugs.
Two million or 12 percent of prescription drug abusers have a drug addiction.
Drug-involved overdose deaths tripled—from 6.1 to 21.6 per 100,000 people—from 1999 to 2019.
The annual cost of substance abuse treatment is over $600 billion.
Around 10 million people misused opioids in 2019. They comprise 3.7 percent of the U.S. population.
In 2019, the most commonly used drugs based on the number and percentage of users are:
Marijuana: 48.2 million (17.5 percent)
Psychotherapeutic drugs: 16.3 million (5.9 percent)
Hallucinogens: 6 million (2.2 percent)
Cocaine: 5.5 million (2.0 percent)
Inhalants: 2.1 million (0.8 percent)
Methamphetamines: 2 million (0.7 percent)
Heroin: 745,000 (0.3 percent)
Forty-five percent of surveyed Americans said they tried marijuana at least once.
A third of those who used marijuana may have some degree of marijuana use disorder. One in 6 people who started using marijuana before the age of 18 become addicted.
In 2020, marijuana use reached its highest rate among college students, at 44 percent.
Hallucinogens (like LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, and other psychedelic substances) are also popular among college students. In 2020, nearly 9 percent of college students used hallucinogens, which is higher than the 5 percent figure in the previous year.
This graph shows the sharply rising number of drug overdose deaths:
Far too many of our young men appear to be in despair.
