How many people whom you meet are at that moment influence by drugs and/or alcohol?

From Marijuana, opioids found in 58 percent of dead drug-impaired drivers by Daniel Uria. It is confusingly written but there is interesting insight.

The report, titled "Drug-Impaired Driving: Marijuana and Opioids Raise Critical Issues for States," said the number of deceased drivers who tested positive for drugs rose to 44 percent in 2016, up 28 percent from a decade prior. [i.e. from 34% to 44%]

Of those drivers, 38 percent tested positive for some form of marijuana, 16 percent tested positive for opioids, and 4 percent tested positive for both marijuana and opioids.

Fifty-one percent of drug-positive, fatally injured drivers tested positive for two or more drugs and 49 percent of drivers killed in crashes who tested positive for alcohol in 2016 also tested positive for drugs.

"Alcohol-impaired driving and drug-impaired driving can no longer be treated as separate issues," Responsibility.org President and CEO Ralph Blackman said. "Drunk driving, which was involved in 28 percent of 2016 traffic fatalities, remains a critical issue; however, to curb impaired driving, we have to think about the combination of substances drivers are often putting into their systems at the same time."

You have to pay attention to the detailed categories to get to the real substance. That's a dog's breakfast of narratives being spun. While it is useful to know that marijuana and opioids are the major categories within "drugs", I think they have buried the lead.

58% of all traffic fatalities involve some combination of drugs and/or alcohol. It is not especially surprising except in the magnitude. We know drunk driving is significant and we know drugs are an impairment. But I would have guessed something more like 30-40% of all traffic accidents. Not 60%.

The breakdown, recast from the article's numbers, is:

Drugs and Alcohol as a percentage of all traffic deaths (58%)

Just Alcohol - 14%
Just Drugs - 30%
Combination - 14%

Establishing an iron-clad social norm that no one drives under the influence would save 8-10,000 lives a year.
Think about this does call tom mind an interesting question. If 60% of traffic fatalities involve alcohol and/or drugs, what is the baseline for the population?

In other words, if you took a random population at dawn, midday and evening, what would be the percentage of that population which had alcohol and/or drugs in their system at that moment of inquiry? 1%? 5%? 10%? 25%? 30%? 60%?

I am certain it is not as high as 60% and I would doubt that it is as low as only 1% having drugs or alcohol in their system at any given moment of time, but what is the baseline? A quick scan of research is not particularly revealing and it seems the research is rife with definitional issues. But it would be interesting to know how much of the population with whom you interact are in some way affected by alcohol and/or drugs at any given interaction.

When you start thinking in that fashion, it raises many other interesting ideas. You would expect it to be low in the morning rising through the day and highest in the late evening? But is that true? You would expect it to be materially higher in some parts of town than others, dome days of the week than others, some social contexts than others. But what is the truth of the matter?

A surprising omission, it would seem, in social knowledge and awareness.