Slog

Results from last year’s national drug-use survey, released today by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, have an unexpected twist.

As a caveat, the results are self-reported and thus a little skewed (This is a call from the federal government—have you been using drugs? Well, golly, no…), but it’s the best measure we have of who is smoking what. As in previous years, the White House is pouncing on the opportunity to show that current anti-drug programs are a smashing success—cheers for prisons and weird ads on TV. As Drug Czar John Walters famously said, “When we push back against the drug problem, it gets smaller.” So on his blog, Pushing Back, he posts nifty diagrams that show drug-use rates dropped over the last five years.

Unimpressed, the Marijuana Policy Project hits back with another graph, showing that the number of new adolescent users hasn’t changed over the same time period. So if we’re “doing it for the children,” we’re not “doing it” very well. But nobody’s talking about another part of the report. What about the parents? And what about the parent’s parents? They’re “doing it.” Graphic 2.7 shows drug use has nearly doubled among pentegenarians.

Among adults aged 50 to 59, the rate of current illicit drug use showed an irregular increasing trend between 2002 and 2007… These patterns and trends may partially reflect the aging into these age groups of the baby boom cohort, whose lifetime rates of illicit drug use are higher than those of older cohorts.

Very irregular indeed. Baby boomers are growing up and getting stoned. But why are they still getting high? I’d bet older women are getting stoned—and getting their husbands stoned—because pot makes sex better. And at 50, they’re not “doing it” for the children.