Ryan Grim's new book, This is Your Country on Drugs, has revived interest in drug use and drug policy. Around the time it hit the streets, this map of drug use by state (via Map Scroll) started circulating around the Internet.

As it turns out, the map is based on detailed data from the National Survey of Drug Use and Health on the use of various types of "illegal drugs" by state.

So, with this treasure trove of data in hand, and with the help of two colleagues, the Swedish regional economist, Charlotta Mellander, and Cambridge University personality psychologist, Jason Rentfrow, we decided to take a look at the relationship between drug use and various political, economic, and psychological characteristics of states.

There's a lot of research that examines the effects of factors like income, poverty, and race on the propensity to use drugs. But our team has been focusing on the role of the psycho-social, as well as economic factors, on state and regional outcomes. A pioneering study by Rentfrow, Sam Gosling, and Jeff Porter identified the effects of personality factors on state-level economic and social outcomes. So we wanted to extend this line of research to see if and how these various economic, demographic, and personality factors might be related to drug use. We are knee-deep in a more extensive research project, but our preliminary results looked so interesting we thought we would report them and encourage feedback.