Who Smokes Marijuana Where?

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Who Smokes Dope, And How Much?

Marijuana stats skew perceptions of use.

Most statistical surveys of marijuana focus on a single quantitative measurement: How many people are using? But there’s a problem: More marijuana use does not necessarily translate into more marijuana users. And that’s because a clear majority of the consumption, and black market dollars, come from the heaviest smokers.

Drug policy researchers at the RAND corporation decided that frequency of use and amount of consumption were valuable parameters gone missing in most policy discussions. So they put the focus not just on use, but also on “use-days,” and pulled a number of buried tidbits from a very big data pile. If you zero in on consumption, and not just consumers, they insist, you will find a wholly different set of inferences.

For example: “Although daily/near-daily users represented less than one-quarter of past-month cannabis users in 2002 and roughly one-third of past-month users in 2011, they account for the vast majority of use-days and are thus presumably responsible for the majority of consumption,” write Rachel M. Burns and her RAND colleagues in Frontiers of Psychiatry. As with alcohol, the majority of cannabis consumption can be accounted for by a minority of users. The heaviest users, the upper 20 percent, consume 88 percent of the U.S. marijuana supply, say the RAND researchers. “Furthermore, if over time there were no change in the number of cannabis users, but the ratio of light vs. heavy users switched from 80/20 to 20/80, then consumption would increase by 250% even though there was no change whatsoever in the number of users.”

The RAND group used two data sets on cannabis consumption—the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) in the U.S., and the EU Drugs Markets II (EUMII) in Europe. Data included figures for past-year and past-month use, past-month use days, and past-month purchases.

Other intriguing figures come to light when you study cannabis use, as opposed to cannabis users. The researchers declared that “only 14% of past-year cannabis users [primarily males] meet the criteria for cannabis abuse or dependence, but they account for 26% of past-month days of use and 37% of past-month purchases.”

Happen to smoke blunts? That turns out to be very telling, according to the RAND study. “Perhaps the most striking contrast concerns blunts. Only 27% of past-year cannabis users report using a blunt within the last month, but those individuals account for 73% of cannabis purchases.” Casual users, it seems, don’t do blunts.

Clearly, it takes a lot of casual users to smoke as much marijuana as one heavy user. But exactly how many? The RAND researchers ran the numbers and concluded that, in terms of grams consumed per month, it would take more than 40 casual smokers to equal the intake of a single heavy user. The share of the market represented by daily/near-daily users is clearly the motive force in their analysis.

The study in Frontiers in Psychiatry also found patterns of interest on the buy side. General use took an upswing beginning in 2007. While the probability of arrest per marijuana smoking episode hovers somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 in 3,000, everything changes if you are purchasing cannabis. RAND reported that young people collectively make more purchases per day of reported use than do older users. Therefore, “statistics indicating that the burden of arrest falls disproportionately on youth relative to their share of all users may not be prima facie evidence of discrimination if making more purchases per day of use increases the risk of arrests per year of use.” Once again, those aging Baby Boomer potheads get the best deal. They have more money with which to buy bigger amounts less often, thereby greatly lessening their chances of arrest and prosecution.

This also applies to minority arrests for marijuana offenses. “Non-Hispanic blacks represent 13% of past-year cannabis users vs. 23% of drug arrests reported by those users, but they report making 24% of the buys. Thus, some of their higher arrest rate may be a consequence of purchase patterns… African-Americans may not only make more buys but also make riskier buys (e.g., more likely to buy outdoors).”

The researchers were able to draw some conclusions about the growth in marijuana usage from 2002 through 2011, based on the NSDUH data. Their main conclusion, after exploring the demographics of this 10-year record of use, is that “consumption grew primarily because of an increase in the average frequency of use, not just because of an increase in the overall number of users.”  The driver of consumption turns out to be… greater consumption. And that increased consumption is coming from… older adults. Those older adults, it turns out, are smoking more weed.

The shift is dramatic: “In 2002, there were more than three times as many youth as older adults using cannabis on a daily/near-daily basis; in 2011 there were 2.5 times more older adults than youth using on a daily/near-daily basis.” The record of alcohol and cigarette use over the same period showed no such inversion of use patterns.  And the tweeners? “In 2002, 12-17-year-olds represented 13% of daily/near-daily users; in 2011, that had dwindled to 7%.” These trends are not just the obvious result of an increase in the proportion of older adults in the population at large. Increases in the proportion of older heavy cannabis users were much greater than the general population drift.

Among the questions raised by the RAND analysis:

— Are older marijuana smokers primarily recreational, or medicinal?

—Do increased use days among older, college-educated marijuana smokers indicate greater social acceptance, or something else?

—Are younger people replacing traditional cannabis use with other substances?

—Why did Hispanic use increase more over the study period than other ethnic groups?

Burns R.M., Caulkins J.P., Everingham S.S. & Kilmer B. (2013). Statistics on Cannabis Users Skew Perceptions of Cannabis Use, Frontiers in Psychiatry, 4   DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2013.00138

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Seven Questions About Marijuana Legalization

RAND researcher nails it neatly.

I’ve been meaning to offer up the key points from an excellent column on marijuana legalization that appeared in April in USA Today. Beau Kilmer, a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, lists the “new and tricky issues” that Colorado and Washington forgot to consider in depth before passing broad legalization statutes.

Both states are works in progress. What they have passed so far will undoubtedly be revisited. Without further ado, here are Kilmer’s “Seven Ps,” as I call them:

Production. Who gets to grow it, where do they get to grow it, and how much do they get to grow? Will the business model be Starbucks, Jack Daniels, or your local organic family farm? Will it be legal on large commercial operations, indoor growing rooms, backyard gardens? All of this matters economically, since it’s likely that legalization will force down the price of marijuana, as growers will be able to operate in the open, and middlemen won’t have to worry about arrest. Implicit in this category are things like product testing and product safety.

Profit. If the history of cigarette and alcohol regulation have any bearing on the matter (and they do), it’s likely that marijuana marketers will want to concentrate promotional efforts on the heaviest smokers. States might decide to limit production to mom-and-pop home producers—or try to, at least. Or they could throw the door open to marijuana in the free market, and attempt to regulate the for-profit corporations that flock to the new opportunity. Monopolistic practices, collusion, price-fixing, bribes, payoffs to government officials—the whole panoply of corporate malpractice would be available to Big Pot if things go that way.

Promotion. The California medical marijuana movement got itself in hot water straightaway by hiring sign pointers to stand on Los Angeles street corners and advertise the cheapest Ozs in the neighborhood. Not smart. States that legalize will likely need to pursue some form of restriction on advertising for institutions or storefronts selling marijuana. However, as the cigarette industry has shown in its successful effort to block mandatory graphic warnings on packaging, companies are availing themselves of 1st Amendment defenses as a way of demolishing attempts to restrict advertising and promotional activities. Since corporations are now officially people, it looks, so far, like a winning strategy in court.

Prevention. States will obviously enact some age restrictions, which haven’t been terribly effect with cigarettes and alcohol. In addition, the decades-old message to America’s schoolchildren about staying “chemical-free,” starting with the evil weed, will have to be revisited and revised. The pioneering states have expended much time and verbiage on the subject of how much to tax marijuana sales, and a good deal less time on whether any of that tax money will go for prevention efforts, or for addiction treatment. Yes, pot is addictive for some people, and pot smokers who are lucky enough not to have this problem cannot seem to summon much sympathy for those who do. This will have to change, as marijuana addiction and withdrawal enter the public sphere with legalization.

Potency. If you count butane hash oil, or “dabbing,” the potency of modern seedless marijuana ranges from about 15 per cent to as high as 90 per cent THC. Yes, that’s quite a bit higher than the shoebox full of Mexican from the good old days. Arguments rage in the research community over the effect of strong pot, and whether it increases cognitive deficits, general anxiety, panic attacks, and even mental illnesses. Beer, wine and alcohol have mandated strength levels, printed right there on the bottle. Something similar will likely have to be crafted for marijuana.

Price. How elastic is the price of pot? Could heavy taxation push the whole game back underground? What’s a fair market price for a quarter of Train Wreck? “Retail prices will largely be a function of consumer demand, production costs and tax rates,” writes Kilmer. “The way taxes are set will also have an effect on what’s purchased and consumed—that is, whether pot is taxed by value, total weight, THC content, or other chemical properties.”

Permanency. With legalization, we are likely to see a pioneer penalty: “The first jurisdictions to legalize pot will probably suffer growing pains and want to make changes later on,” Kilmer believes. He envisions a powerful lobbying organization putting the arm on legislators on behalf of a newly legal and seriously profitable line of business. It would be best if legislation comes with maximum flexibility to make future changes, so states can adapt their operations as the thing plays out on the ground for the first time.


I personally understand and sympathize with the drive for legalization. I also think that Colorado and Washington have jumped first, and plan to think later, sorting it all out in freefall. That seems like a possible recipe for disasters large and small. Moving a popular drug across the legal/illegal line is a bit like getting molecules through the blood-brain barrier: It can be done, but it had better be done with sufficient care and forethought.

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