Arizona has seen an increase of marijuana use over the years, but falls in the middle for most marijuana use by state.
This comes at a time when the national rate of marijuana use is up, according to Brad Stone, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration communications director.
SAMHSA is an agency established by Congress in 1992 to target substance abuse and mental health services effectively.
The rise in the rate of marijuana use is based on a national SAMHSA survey and consists of data from 2008 to 2010.
“In 2010 17.4 million Americans ages 12 and up were current users of marijuana,” Stone said. That’s almost 6 percent of the United States population.
According to Stone, the rate of current marijuana users 12 and older has gone up compared to 2007 when it was at 14.4 million.
The most current SAMHSA data available by state however, is from 2008 and 2009. SAMHSA breaks the data up by age groups and puts states in to five different categories based on percentages of persons.
These categories include: 12.85-16.29 percent; 10.87-12.84 percent; 10.06-10.86 percent; 9.02-10.05 percent; and 7.17-9.01 percent.
Arizona falls into the middle category of 10.06-10.86 percent of people ages 12 and up who have used marijuana in the past year.
California, Alaska, Oregon, Colorado, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and Rhode Island are among the states with the highest marijuana use.
Idaho, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Florida, North Carolina, and Maryland fall into the same group as Arizona.
The use of marijuana may be up, but the number of pounds of marijuana seized by the U.S. Border Patrol has gone down.
