Conflicting statistics in West Virginia

This goes to show how meaningless the government's SAMHSA reports are. Take these statistics.

On average 3.5 percent of West Virginians surveyed from 1999 to 2001 said they had used marijuana in the last month, compared to about five percent nationally.

The report also shows that about one-point-four percent of West Virginians said they tried the drug for the first time in a given year, which is slightly less than the national average of 1.6 percent.

That makes sense so far. But then there's this little gem.

About 49 percent of state respondents said they were at great risk of smoking marijuana once a month, which is higher than the national average of about 43 percent.

Now what does that mean, at great risk of smoking marijuana? Someone is going to make them do it? They won't be able to stop themselves if they see some? And if the reported use is lower than average, how can the risk of smoking be higher? Sounds to me like the interviewees just didn't want to tell some stranger how often they really smoke, or maybe they only interviewed kids in front of their parents.

Self-reporting use of an illegal substance to the government doesn't seem the best way to collect this data somehow. I wonder how many of our tax dollars were spent on this little piece of science fiction?