California’s long-standing reputation of being first in just about everything doesn’t hold up when it comes to drug abuse. In fact, the Golden State ranks 23rd among the fifty states and the District of Columbia studied by WalletHub, the personal finance website.

Three of the top five worst states for drug abuse and addiction were in the Northeast. At the bottom of WalletHub’s list were the Plains states including Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota and Idaho.

California scored highest in the rehab rankings at number 17.

Nationwide, the number of people who admit to ever using an illicit drug rose to 48.8% in 2015, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Annual overdose deaths have more than tripled from 2000 and over 11 times more people were in prisons and jails for drug offenses in 2015 than in 1980, according to The Sentencing Project.

Story Date: June 3, 2017