I'm not a data scientist nor working in health care, but my personal opinion leans towards drug abuse being more related/linked to a person's personal experiences, upbringing, and social and economic conditions rather than primarily being linked to where they live. Both rich and poor statistically are represented in terms of drug abuse, the consequences for drug abuse are often more severe for abuse if one is on the less affluent side though (enforcement-wise and health-wise in a historical sense).
If growing up (and currently living) in the rural American south has taught me anything, everyone is high on something. From my mother taking xanax to balance out the overwhelming amount of volunteer work stress she has from church, friends smoking/drinking away the boredom after a long day of oilfield work, or my weed habit for settling down my mind after a long day at the computer.
I think it's like that most everywhere (at the very least, in the US) not just the rural South. I can't remember who sent it, but there was a great tweet I read once that went something like:
"The two biggest surprises of my transition from childhood to adult life were learning that:
1. Everyone is on cocaine.
2. Cheese is fucking expensive."
And sure enough, as I approach 40, practically every adult I know regularly uses at least one—and usually several—mood-, mind-, or perception-altering drugs, legal or otherwise. I'm sure it was true when I was a kid, too, but a combination of my own obliviousness and DARE programs had me thinking otherwise.
[EDIT] actually, I bet it's like that everywhere, period, with few exceptions. There was a travel photo-blogger I used to read a lot, and a common feature of trips to relatively remote and non-touristy/low-development areas was "here's the stall where they sell the one or two obscure-to-westerners drugs that every single adult here takes every single day" For developed areas I expect that only didn't happen because, outside of tobacco, alcohol, caffeine, maybe weed (quite a list already!), plus, you know, drug stores full of prescription drugs, the drugs aren't sold openly like that.
I, too, am approaching 40, and I am still shocked by how many people, how very many high-functioning/high-status/high-contribution-to-society people are fueled by drugs.
Doctors, nurses, lawyers, managers, psychologists, developers…bring on the modafinil, Adderall, cocaine, MDMA, mushrooms, and weed.
(Not that I would ever do such things, no sir, this current design I’m about to ship doesn’t taste like Provigil at all.)
Yeah, even though I've joined that group, I still struggle to process it. "You mean... an extremely high percentage of successful people are 'druggies'?" It's so entirely contrary to the propaganda we received as kids.
Re-contextualizes a lot of cop and justice system stuff. "The defendant had coke in his car". Yeah, so? Decent chance the judge has some in his chambers, too. Doesn't mean shit. "The suspect smelled of weed" yeah, and so did some of the best teachers and professors I ever had, who were, I'm pretty sure, high more often than not.
Another weird thing: my view on alcohol has gotten a lot dimmer over time. As much as I love some of the flavors you can get out of fermentation and distillation, it really is one of the worst of the lot, as far as health damage and how it makes you feel, often stretching into the next day as general lethargy and feeling "off", even if you don't have every much.
I would love to see that stats on that, but it somehow seems like it is more common in the US than in, say, Denmark or the UK even. But then, my perception is primarily from:
1. US TV shows, where it seems like all kinds of drug use is more normalized
2. US 'high-status' culture seeming very odd - this whole thing about people having to always appear positive, high-energy, always busy (partly what I see from US TV shows, partly what my own experience) just doesn't seem sustainable without some sort of drug support.
