I am always fascinated by the national surveys that rank cities and states, like the recent rankings of healthy and unhealthy cities for women done recently by Self Magazine and the safest place to raise a child by Safe Kids USA. Well, now it looks like Uncle Sam has released the new report ranking states by the sordid issue of drug use, and its occasional counterpart mental health. The Department of Health and Human Services issued a report of substance abuse and mental health based on a survey of 136,110 people completed in 2005 and 2006. North Dakota was the cleanest state in a couple of instances, but depression and drug use superlatives can be found all across the map of these United States.
Want to see if your state ranks the highest in marijuana abuse or lowest in depression rates? Then read more.
When asked if they had used illicit drugs during the previous month, the highest number of positive responses came from Rhode Island, with 11.2% of respondents answering yes. North Dakota had the lowest percentage of people reporting use of the illicit drug.
The citizens of Vermont reported the highest percentage of marijuana use and Utah reported the lowest, in the month prior to answering the survey. Seems like Vermont* might be earning its nickname of the Green Mountain State for more than one reason since 9.7 percent of its citizen participating in the survey reported smoking the green bud compared with Utah's citizenry with only 4.3 percent answering positive to the question of using marijuana.
Cocaine use was reported by 2.4 percent of all participants with rates being highest in Washington, D.C. with 4.9 percent and lowest in North Dakota with only 1.6 percent.
On the mental health front, Nevada had the highest rate of reported depression with 9.4 percent and Hawaii had the lowest adult depression rate of 5 percent.
If you are interested in further reading, the full report is available on the Health and Human Services website.
*Vermont was also ranked number one in the Summer Safety Report. Go figure!
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meth addiction is terrible in the northwest.