It seems they love coacine in the Sothwest and New England. Why?

Factual Questions
1

This article on Yahoo includes a graph that shows per capita cocaine use by state. The results really surprised me. Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona, as well as Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire (and Maybe Rhode Island, map is pretty darn small) seem to lead the nation in the percentage of people dipping into the Colombian marching powder.

What the hell? I would have speculated that states with large urban areas like California, New Jersey, New York, Illinois, Texas, and Florida (Miami just has that cokey vibe) would have more blow users, as well as “late night” places like, well, California, New York, Illinois, Florida, with perhaps Nevada and Louisiana thrown in there.

As is often the case, my speculation is wrong! Maybe Colorado, Arizona, and Massachusetts make a little sense with Denver, Phoenix, and Boston being major cities, but those towns are not known for being late night places, at least in my experience. Denver and Boston both roll up the streets at 2:00 am, and Arizona bars closed at one until the last year or so, I believe.

And New Mexico, Vermont, and New Hampshire, what gives? OK, I don’t know too much about the cocaine culture, but when I think of people who use cocaine, I have always thought of Wall Street types taking a bump to get straightened up before the European markets open or hipsters in a Miami disco at 4:00 am snorting a big hollywood line off some stripper’s plastic fantastics. I sure as heck don’t think of a raging coke part in Montpelier or Santa Fe.

Now the numerical difference between the colored levels on the map is pretty small, but there is definite geographical clustering leading me to believe it is not randomness at work here.

So, any ideas?

2

All I can say is you can look at a graph for just about any drug and scratch your head. There are regional drug fads that take over and always have. Maybe it has to do with the struggling and distribution channels available there. I saw a similar chart last year that showed Rhode Island and Massachusetts near the top for marijuana use. I had no idea. I would have figured California but I guess it really is the quiet types you have to watch out for.

Meth, that scary evil drug from hell, doesn’t seem to be all that common here in New England but my tiny hometown in rural Louisiana seems to be discovering major meth labs and making mass arrests every week. Meth is taking over rural areas and middle America.

3

You seem to have ignored the rate of underreporting. This figures are derived from surveys where users have to volunteer about their use. That rate can vary based on the culture and attitudes about drug use.

4

I’m a mathematician, not a statistician (and to be candid I don’t know much statistics, therefore what I’m saying may be wrong), but still, when I look at that map I’m inclined to think that it’s bullshit. Notice that the extremes are separated by less than 1%. I don’t see any details about how they did their sampling, but I wouldn’t be surprised (again, speaking somewhat out of ignorance here) if the margin of error is larger than that.

5

Just my off hand experience working in EMS – Las Vegas sure does love their Meth, can’t get enough of it. In Albuquerque I took care of far more heroin overdoses than any other drug. Shit flows around like water down there.
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As to why, my guess is that any drug is more likely to be used as socioeconomic status and education level goes down (and the two usually go hand in hand). New Mexico is a ridiculously poor state in general. In Las Vegas there is a very large Hispanic and African American population, and without getting too large a brush (there is a lot of poor white people too), they live near or below the poverty level. This situation lends itself to drug use.

6

T_SQUARE, I just wanted to add that I didn’t notice you had addressed that same point until after I made my post (I just skimmed over it at first). Didn’t mean to ignore your comment like that. The geographical clustering is an interesting point; it might be explained by II Gyan II comment, I’m really not sure. My gut feeling is still that the map is bullshit.

7

The article also didn’t make much of a distinction between “cocaine” and “crack cocaine” (except for a passing mention of a crack house).

Wouldn’t this also skew the demographics of such a survey a bit?

8

Especially in the treatment statistics. According to the 2006 National Drug Threat Assessment, of the 250,000 treatment admissions for cocaine, in 2003, roughly 180,000 were for smoked cocaine i.e. crack and 70,000 for nonsmoked. The disproportionate effect is clear when noticing that 0.6% of all Americans ages 12 and above used crack (and maybe powder) atleast once in 2003, and 1.9% powder cocaine only.