We mean, have you seen The Rockies play? Could be a coping strategy …
All across the country, different states and regions have different preferences and behaviors they're known for.
New Mexico's is green chili. Vermont's is cheese. North Carolina's is a pathological obsession with people's bathroom habits.
Colorado's, on the other hand, is drugs.
Party drugs. Nose drugs. Prescription drugs. Liquid drugs. Doesn't matter; we just really love drugs.
In fact, we love drugs so much that a new survey shows Coloradans use more drugs more frequently than people in any other state, and no, we're not just talking about marijuana (or "marjijuana," as USA Today likes to call it. Party on, Wayne). Our great population also uses cocaine, opioid painkillers and alcohol at a higher rate than the rest of the country as well.
This finding comes from the The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's annual survey, which looks at drug use trends for cocaine, opiod painkillers, marijuana and alcohol across all 50 states. In the survey, states are ranked into quintiles based on what proportion of their population uses each substance, and SAMHSA creates a “top 10 list” for all four.
Colorado stands out as the only state which is a top consumer of all four substances. Of course, our high weed consumption rate is predictable thanks to legal weed, and we reported that Colorado's cocaine use is incredibly high, literally, a few years back, but frankly, it's surprising to know that our love of getting fucked up is both inimitable and solitary.
Look, you guys: that big dark green square is us:
Whoa. Either we're colorblind or Colorado is just so wasted they gave us our own color of black-out … which is just a dark shade of green to remind us how much weed we smoke. Thanks?
Other areas of the country had also had concerningly high rates of blah blah blah, but we don't care because right now, we're more interested with figuring out what's behind Colorado's deep and unwavering commitment love of party.
It's a little strange, considering that the quality of life here is rather high. From an outsider's perspective, life in Colorado doesn't really seem like one you'd need to tune out and fade away from; our job market is booming, our education is competitive, the weather is beautiful, and we're pretty accommodating of all political, religious and personal beliefs. Because of this, we consistently get ranked as one of the best places to live, move to, work and date in.
However, that Stepford exterior can be misleading. Behind that, Colorado struggles with high suicide and depression rates, and it would be easy to see how our state's booming housing market could lead to some serious stress about finances. Stress that only blowing a few lines then working a triple shift or numbing yourself with some amazing craft Colorado beer can remedy. We don't know, just theorizing here.
Of course, we'd like to blame Colorado's insane drug use levels on the fact that our population is just young, liberal and likes to party, but you could say that about so many other places that don't share our love for Oxy-weed-beer that it's not really accurate to associate our drug use with our love of extracurricular leisure activities.
Instead, it would be interesting to look into the reasoning behind these levels, both so we can get people the help they need and so we can get back to being known for things like "Least Obese State" and "National Illuminanti Headquarters." Those have a much better ring to them.
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