Who Are The Pot Smokers In Your Neighborhood? Ride-Sharing Employees And Tech Workers, Mostly

If you’re wondering which jobs attract the most post smokers, well, wonder no more: it’s employees in the ride-sharing app industry. This is according to new research from the team behind workplace app Blind, which asked its users to take a survey about drug use. Perhaps not surprisingly, the big users are employees of ride-sharing apps, followed closely by other big names in the tech industry.

Before digging into the data, a few points need to be made. First, Blind’s research is anything but scientific because only users who chose to respond gave answers; in a true scientific survey (such as a telephone survey), respondents don’t volunteer to be part of the survey. Second, because Blind is a workplace app, the pool of survey respondents is limited strictly to those who use the app rather than a random sample of all Americans. And in this particular case, the survey was limited only to those who work in the tech industry.

Nevertheless, based on the admittedly non-scientific results, it seems like ride-sharing and weed go hand in hand. Specifically, 49 percent of Lyft employees answered “yes” when asked if they had used marijuana “once or twice” in the last year.

Keep in mind that no one is saying that Lyft drivers like to use pot on the job – at least, that’s not what this particular survey is saying. Whether or not the survey included drivers, or simply behind-the-scenes employees, or both, is unclear. And by all means, if you summon a Lyft and the driver is high: a) don’t get in the car and b) make sure to mention that via the app.

After Lyft, the next company with the highest concentration of pot users (also 49 percent) is Netflix.

Down at the bottom, it seems that applet producer Adobe has the most squares in its employ: only 23 percent admitted to being pot smokers.

In case you were wondering, 22 percent of Americans, in general, admit to being regular pot smokers, according to a 2017 (and legitimately scientific) Marist poll. So even at uptight Adobe, there are still more pot smokers on the payroll, percentage-wise, than America at large.

So why does the tech industry seem to attract so many lovers of the Sticky Icky? Most likely, it’s a matter of location. The tech industry is largely centered around San Francisco, Seattle, and the West Coast – all places where recreational marijuana is legal at the state level. There’s also the matter of disposable income: working in tech pays well and (good) pot is an expensive vice.

There’s also the old bugaboo of drug testing. From a practical standpoint, drug testing makes sense in workplaces where safety is a major concern: trucking, logging, that sort of thing. Where most of the workday involves sitting at a desk, employees coming to work high may be a liability as far as productivity, but they’re not likely to be a safety hazard.