Monday Map: The Distribution of Drug Use

Here's your Monday map - a look at the use of illegal substances other than marijuana across the United States.

The map comes via the great map blog The Map Scroll, using data from the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services. Map Scroll went on to post maps by specific drugs here, and makes some interesting observations:

...Another thing that challenges my prejudices is that there doesn't seem to be any correlation between the wealth or human development of states and their level of drug use. Some high-development states, like New Jersey and Pennsylvania, have low levels of drug use; and some, like Massachusetts and Colorado, have high levels of drug use. And some low-development states, like Arkansas and Tennessee, have high levels of drug use, while others, like South Carolina and Alabama, have low levels of drug use. There do seem to be some regional trends - especially the high rates of drug use in the non-Mormon West - but a lot of variation within regions as well. All in all it just looks pretty random.