We were definitely just as surprised as City Desk to hear that D.C. is at the top of the country (by a pretty big margin) in cocaine use. Having lived in Los Angeles for about the same amount of time that I’ve now lived here, it certainly doesn’t seem like there’s nearly as much cocaine around as in that city, let alone as say, New York. D.C.’s full of square federal employees with security clearances to worry over, isn’t it? But take a closer look at the full study. First of all, it’s another one of those ones that compares D.C., an entirely urban district, with states, which are made up of both cities and large swaths of suburban and rural areas. Second, there’s no separate category in this survey for crack (or any other illicit drug besides marijuana, for that matter), so it appears that is included under the “cocaine” banner. My bet is that strict cocaine use in D.C. is nowhere near as rampant as this study makes it out to be when compared to other large metropolitan areas.