Marijuana use graphed by age cohort

According to the government's National Survey on Drug Use and Health, majorities of every age group below 60 (with one anomalous exception) tell surveyors they have smoked pot sometime in their lives. Given that the surveys ask people to admit to illegal behavior, it's almost certain that the actual numbers are higher, though just how much higher we can't tell. While there are surely some people who have smoked pot but believe fervently that it should be illegal, the fact that half the electorate got high and survived suggests an ample constituency for legalization efforts.

My cohort is that last one on the right, and we are rapidly dying off.  Ironically we "came of age" in the 1960s and considered ourselves on the cutting edge of a new trend.  What I find most interesting about the graph above is not the "lifetime use" in red, but the decline in "past year" consumption with age.  As noted in the text, the numbers may not be precise, but it is likely the trend is true.  Why the falloff?  Lack of access? Health concerns?  Loss of interest?  Concerns about job and family interactions?  Interesting.

Text and graph from an article in The American Prospect, which also offers this graph/text:

This November, voters in Washington, Oregon, and Colorado have the chance to do something radical: legalize marijuana for recreational use. In all three states, activists secured enough petition signatures to place initiatives on the ballot to essentially treat cannabis like alcohol, regulating its distribution and taxing it...

One poll shows the Washington initiative passing by a 13-point margin, while a poll in Colorado predicts an even bigger margin in favor. These polls should be read skeptically, but they suggest the strong possibility that at least one of these initiatives could succeed.

If that happens, it will raise a whole slew of questions for the country about personal liberty, the costs of the drug war, and the relationship between the federal government and the states. But the momentum is clearly with those who would undo some of our nation's restrictions on marijuana...

Let's say one of the marijuana initiatives wins at the ballot box in November. What happens then? This is where things get complicated. No matter what a state decides, marijuana is still illegal under federal law. While Barack Obama's Justice Department said in its first year that it wouldn't go around arresting people who were complying with their state's marijuana laws, he turned out to be nearly as much of a drug warrior as any of his predecessors. Obama has never advocated removing marijuana from Schedule 1, the classification that puts it alongside heroin and cocaine as drugs that "have a high potential for abuse" and "no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States."..

The only thing that would make things less complicated would be legalization, or at least decriminalization, on a national level. Despite the clear direction of public opinion, that seems a long way away.

Via The Dish.