Psychoactive drug use has become the bane of American culture. While perhaps not obvious to the passerby, drug use is a surprisingly common practice occurring behind closed doors across the nation.
Conservatives might place the blame on the "kids of today," when in fact, kids make up only about a fifty percent majority of pot smokers. Baby boomers, later the Hippies, and finally the Yuppie Generation comprise a startling percent of current [psychoactive] drug users, cannabis (a.k.a. weed) being their drug of choice. In fact, according to the United States Department of Health and Human Services: SAMHSA, over seventy (70) million Americans over the age of twelve (12) have used marijuana at least once. Furthermore, many of those children who currently smoke owe their habit(s) to an elder, i.e. an older brother/sister, parent, and/or relative. Thought not as popular as nicotine, the joint is relative to the common cigarette in terms of one-time use.
Cannabis is not the only psychoactive drug pervading contemporary culture. More popular among American citizens than both cigarettes and weed, is alcohol. Available in various forms (wine, beer, hard liquor), alcohol consumption is practiced (at a minimum of once [1x]) by nearly every American within his/her lifetime. As the M.A.D.D. organization will readily volunteer, "alcohol is the number one drug problem among young people." Upwards of five (5) billion dollars a year are spent by students on alcohol.
While the drinking age has significantly lowered, "drinking" might occur one or several times throughout the average lifetime. Not all cases occur on an extreme scale (i.e. drunkenness) either, with incidences ranging from a glass of wine with a meal to regular inebriation. Persons under twenty-one (21) cannot purchase alcohol according to Federal law, however to acquire alcoholic beverages is surprisingly simple. Being the most popular "drug" among students today, the use of alcohol as a psychoactive drug will be interesting to monitor over the next quarter century.
