[Incorrigible]

The Baby Boomers continue to show how society should NOT behave.

 

[Incorrigible]

Let the Boomer bashing commence!

[Uncledave]

I'd be interetsed to know how voting patterns break down among the boomer drug users.

[yellowdoghunter]

Why does this not surprise me.

Baby boomers....just trying to leave America in worse shape than when they inherited it. Oh, what a legacy.....:)

[npg]

On balance, the Boomer generation has been a disaster.

They have undone most of the good work of their parents, the amazing WW2 generation.

[verum ago]

"Do what I say, not what I smoke..."

[ThisLittleLightofMine]

My mother the boomer:

1. Did drugs
2. Married multiple times
3. still has mental problems

I am so thankful that she was a mess otherwise I might have turned out to be a liberal.

[Jim Noble]

Far out, Catherwood!

[kittymyrib]

Sheesh...what a depressing prospect: a bunch of old pot heads sitting in nursing homes spouting left-wing political drivel and agitating for free health care so they can torment the country till they're 100.

[ansel12]

In recent years, now that the boomers have finally gotten old enough to take the reins of power from the previous generations they have led the country to the right.

The great destructive acts that brought down America like the 60s legislation and the immigration act of 1965, etc, etc, etc, and the years from the 30s to the 90s were not the boomers.

A generation doesn't start running a country until they start hitting their 50s.

In 1996 the oldest boomer turned 50, the youngest one turned 32.

In 1970 when the sixties were over the boomers ranged in age from from 6 to 24, think about it folks, then ask yourselves why you bought this bill of goods.

[toddlintown]

Anybody want a hit?

[Sir Gawain]

While drug use went up slightly in '05, so did alcohol use.

For some reason I was under the impression that alcohol was a drug. Clever to separate it to hide the hypocrisy of the drug war.

[mugs99]

The Baby Boomers continue to show how society should NOT behave.

And you arrive at this conclusion by way of a press release from the Ministry of Propaganda?

These statistics are the result of SAMHSA surveys. These are household surveys, conducted in the home, and can tie the admission of illegal behavior to an individual person, address and telephone number.

Many respondents are aware that providing incriminating data to a surveyor holds risk. Media reports regularly describe the proliferation (and compromising) of databases containing private information; this is likely to condition survey respondents to ask themselves whether their answers could potentially end up in a database connected to their name. It begs credulity to assume that a vast majority of informed adults would be reliably honest about their use of illegal drugs.

The survey results over the past several years reflects the rising public awareness of the danger of answering these surveys honestly. Younger respondents are more aware of the danger than baby boomers are.
.

[TKDietz]

This does not mean that older people are picking up drugs, only that those who picked up drugs in the sixties and seventies are getting older. Every year the percentage using drugs in the older age categories goes up, as this first crop of drug users growing up in the sixties and seventies ages. Older people who never messed with drugs are moving to older age brackets and those who were teens back when drug use really started taking off are replacing them are filling the 50-59 age bracket. People 50 to 59 in 2005 were born between 1946 and 1955. Those born in 1955 are much more likely to have used drugs than those born in 1946 because they were in their late teens and early twenties (prime drug taking years) during the late 1970's when drug use peaked in this country. The oldest of the boomers did not use drugs as much as those born after them because drug use didn't really hit mainstream among youth on a wide scale until the latter part of the 70's. It was more a college campus, big city, West Coast thing in the sixties. It spread out to the rest of the country in the seventies peaking in 1979 according to the government surveys. Those born before 1946 were less likely to have ever tried drugs than those born after 1946, and thus are even less likely to use drugs today than those born later.

Anyway, a small percentage of these people who started fooling around with drugs when they were younger never quit. This 2005 survey was the first year that everyone in the 50 to 59 age bracket was born in 1946 or later. The pre boomers are now in higher age brackets, and the higher age brackets are showing increased drug use too. More have tried illicit drugs in their lifetimes, more admit to using in the past year, and more admit using in the past month. We'll see these numbers get higher every single year because those who came of age before drugs became popular are dying off and being replaced by those who came of age when drug use was at its peak in this country.

Here is a link to drug use by detailed age categories numbers from the 2005 survey. You can find previous surveys at SAMHSA's OAS site if you look around: http://oas.samhsa.gov/NSDUH/2k5NSDUH/AppG.htm#TabG-10

[JFC]

does Ambian CR and Crestor count as drug use?

[truth_seeker]

"The Baby Boomers continue to show how society should NOT behave."

Society is doomed. We now learn in a headlined newspaper article that 4 percent of middle-aged (boomer) people smoke pot.

I worry about people using methamphetamine, regardless of age.

I don't worry much about 50+ year old pot smokers.

Dave's not here.

[Antoninus]

Conclusion: Baby Boomers are dumber than the average teenager.

[redrock]

Polls are nice.

But....Polls are usually wrong. Especially when describing people as a monolithic anything.

I am a 'boomer'...and yet I don't 'do' drugs and I vote pretty darn conservativly.

I have friends that smoke dope and vote straight Republican. I have friends who don't do drugs and vote Democrat.

Human society is W-A-Y to complicated to explain away in some silly poll.

Just look at FR. Supposedly we are all 'conservative'......and yet look at all the disagreement.

redrock

[RockinRight]

Was Bill Clinton in this survey?

[headsonpikes]

The first numbers that really struck me in the article were near the end. They stated stated that over 30,000,000 Americans should be jailed for driving drunk:

"Slightly more than half of Americans age 12 and older reported being current drinkers of alcohol. That translates to 126 million people, up from 121 million people the year before....The percentage of Americans who acknowledged driving drunk at least once in the past year also dropped slightly in 2005 — from 13.5 percent to 13 percent.

That 30,000,000 ios several times the number of total users of marijuana.

I do believe that most of us agree that drunk drivers should be punished. Don't drunks deserve a War of their own?

I suppose the all-wise goobermint leaves that issue in the capable hands of the Mad Mothers.

The War on Drugs is a Freaking Joke placemarker.

[TKDietz]

"Drug use up for boomers, down for teens"

The title of this piece is even dishonest. The author is talking about one age group, those 50 to 59. He says drug use increased for this age group for three years in a row through 2005. The problem is that these NSDUH surveys are conducted in June of each year and at no time in the three years before and including the June 2005 survey were all the people in the 50 to 59 age group Baby Boomers. There would have still been some people born in 1945 who were 59 in June of 2005, and there would have been a lot more born before 1946 in June of 2004 even more in 2003. The only way you it would be fair to say that more Boomers are using drugs would be to look at those born from 1946 to 1964 over a period of years and see if the percentage of that group reporting drug use is growing. Unfortunately the NSDUH doesn't break the numbers down for us in a way make exact calculation in that regard, but just glancing at the numbers it is appears that drug use has not increased for Baby Boomers.

The older people get, the less likely they are to do drugs, even if they did use drugs at some point in their lives. This hasn't changed. When you look the numbers for those in their forties, it appears that the number who use drugs is stabilizing or even dropping. What's happening is that drug users who were in their forties are getting older and populating the 50 to 59 age group, and a small percentage of them still use drugs. In 2004 only 38.2% of those 55 to 59 reported that they had ever even tried an illicit drug. That number jumped to 44.1% in 2004. It was much lower in years prior to 2004. Is the increase we are seeing in the number who report past use in their lifetimes occurring because more and more people in their fifties are trying drugs? Of course not. If you look at those in their forties you will see that better than 60% of them have tried drugs and close to that percentage of those between 50 and 54 have as well. What's happening is that those who grew up when drug use took off in the sixties and seventies and peaked in 1979 are getting older. Very few of them still use drugs, but those few who still do are getting older too and moving on up in the age brackets.

We'll see increases in the 50 to 59 group for a few more years to come until the number of those in that age group who have ever tried drugs hits around 60%, what it is for those who were born after them. The biggest increases over the next several years though will be in the 60 to 64 age group and the 65 and up age category. Drug use actually doubled for the 65 and older group from 2004 and 2005, from .4% to .8%. And again, that's not because more and more senior citizens are getting into drugs, it's because those older folks who came of age before drugs were ever popular are dying off and those who were still relatively young in the sixties and seventies are getting older. If you were 65 in June of 2005 you would have been 25 in 1965 and only 30 by 1970, young enough to have been partying with the crowd getting into drugs. On the 2004 NSDUH only 8.3% of those 65 and older reported ever having even tried an illicit drug. In 2005 10.9% admitted on the survey to having tried one or more illicit drugs during their lifetimes. That percentage has been increasing and it will continue to increase, as will the small percentage of people 65 and older still using illicit drugs.

Look at the tables though. Only about 6% of those 60 through 64 who admitted ever using drugs said they used drugs in the month preceding the survey, compared to about 40% of 18 year olds who admitted drug use at some point in their lives. For the most part when you look at these tables throughout the years, the older people get, the less likely they are to use drugs. People tend to grow out of their wild drug taking phases as they get older. The same happened with Baby Boomers. Drug use may very well be up for the author of the article that is the subject of this thread, but it is not up for Baby Boomers.

You can see this for yourselves if you'll just look at these tables: http://oas.samhsa.gov/NSDUH/2k5NSDUH/AppG.htm#TabG-10