Yesterday, I answered an hour-long survey on Drugs, Alcohol, Tobacco and Mental Health. It's a government program called, appropriately enough, the National Survey on Drug Use & Health.

Most of it was as you'd expect - lots and lots of questions about what you'd done, how often, etc. For the most part, it was all dry and free of any obvious bias, although I think any survey of this sort is prone to people misreporting their experiences. (On the plus side, I got $30 for answering the questions).

Then toward the end, I ran into this question:

How do you feel about adults trying marijuana or hashish once or twice?
1 Neither approve nor disapprove
2 Somewhat disapprove
3 Strongly disapprove

No matter what I was going to answer, I was struck by an obvious omission. What if I approved of people trying it once or twice? If the question replaced "marijuana or hashish" with "alcohol" would there be extra options? Although what would "approve" mean in this case, anyway? Would it mean I advocate forcing everyone to try a joint once or twice? I certainly couldn't advocate that. But I also don't think trying it once or twice does any irreparable harm.

Looking through the survey's data from 2006 I can tell there were more questions for the 12-17 year olds who took the survey. They were asked questions about their feelings toward peers who used drugs, alcohol or tobacco and what they thought their parents' feelings were about them possibly using. Again, there was obviously no "approve" option.

It seems odd that a survey designed to measure people's perceptions of drug use would include such obvious bias. OK, not that odd. But being able to answer that you've tried illegal substances but being unable to approve of illegal substances seems so obviously political that it should have been flagged somewhere along the line.

(And for those interested - the survey web page lists survey results yearly starting in 1994. I didn't bother to search through the questions for all the years, but I found a page that said this question dates back to at least 2000, and I would guess it dates back earlier than that.)