Huffington Post has a graphic up showing about 2,980 metric tons of pot confiscated in 2009. Let us assume that the authorities get 10% of the traffic. So multiply that by 9 to get the total consumption. That gives 26,820 metric tons consumed. A metric ton is about 2,200 lbs. So that is roughly 59,000,000 lbs. If we assume consumption by consumers at a pound a year that gives about 60 million regular marijuana users a year. That is probably a minimum since a pound a year is high consumption. If we assume an ounce a month (still high) that would be about 80 million regular users. At an average of a half ounce a month we get 160 million users (a doubtful number). And of course the ratio of confiscations to total traffic could be off. But 10% is the commonly given law enforcement estimate.
In any case the “fact” of about 15 million regular marijuana users in the US (latest numbers – 2010 – show 17.4 million) are probably on the low end.
Comments
4 responses to “How Many Pot Smokers In America?”
Yeah, hard to say. I’ve known people who would smoke an ounce the same day they got it, others who would stretch it out for months. And it depends on the source too — the domestically produced stuff might be 10x as potent as that smuggled from Mexico.
So there’s a lot of confounding factors. But I would guess the surveys under-report quite a bit — 5% seems way too low, I would say 10% is probably the floor.
As an aside, I was recently in San Francisco, and these days you can smell pot smoke on just about every block downtown, not just in Haight-Ashbury. And I don’t mean just a whiff, either. Heaven help you if you smoke tobacco in public, but apparently the state of California doesn’t object to a contact high!
Ironically, it reminded me why I’ve never tried the stuff. I just can’t stand the smell.
but we didn’t inhale.
@ Neil (I’ve tried it but I couldn’t stand the sneezing.) But, you know, I DO not think that I or anyone else has the right to say “I don’t like it, so you can’t have it.”
And that’s the problem. TOO damned many say “I don’t like it so you can’t have it.”
@ Kathy,
I tend to agree. However, I couldn’t help noticing the hypocrisy of strictly enforcing a no-smoking ban–unless you’re in a politically correct neighborhood smoking politically correct vegetation.
None of this has anything to do with freedom, it’s just a tangle of laws intended to make us all jump and dance at the prosecutorial discretion of our betters.