10% of U.S. adults abuse drugs?
It's quite a surprise to see a study proclaim that 10% of adults in the U.S. abuse drugs. That's nearly 30 million people, folks. What's wrong with that picture?Researchers who compiled the data stated that abuse was defined as an intense desire to use drugs to the exclusion of other activities -- and addiction as physical dependence on a drug. That sounds very logical to me, and excludes "mild" uses of drugs by some. In fact, those two definitions are definitely indicative regular abuse, not irregular abuse, right?
Why are all these adults abusing drugs? Is life that difficult in the U.S. these days (which require "escapes") or is access that easy -- or both?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-08-2007 @ 2:19PM
nick said...
Your statistics are off a bit. There are only 220,000,000 adults in the US, thus there would only be 22 million adult drug abusers.
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5-08-2007 @ 3:52PM
Laural said...
The secret is the past tense. "The researchers based their findings on interviews with 43,093 people in 2001 and 2002. They estimated 10.3 percent of U.S. adults abused drugs during their lifetimes, including 2.6 percent who become addicted. The researchers said 2 percent reported symptoms of abuse or addiction in the previous year."
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5-10-2007 @ 9:45AM
JonAtkins said...
Addiction, being the cunning enemy that it is, is much more difficult to admit to or even realize... I feel these numbers are incredibly low, I have not statistics, I just know that people use drugs and don't consider themselves addicts or drug abusers.
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