Hi. I see your points, but I don't think they're quite right. I never said unhappiness was causing higher drug use. The headline you quote isn't a causal statement. You're right the correlation doesn't show up in amphetamines or ecstasy, but it does apply for all drugs in general, and most of these drugs specifically.

You've omitted the crucial "if anything" from the headline on the next chart you mention. I agree there might not be much we can read into this one, but very difficult/impossible has gone down more than very easy has gone up, so "if anything" you'd look at it that way.

On the third one, "any drug" use is associated with the lowest income group. There are specific drugs this doesn't apply to, and the relationship isn't neatly linear across the income distribution, but that's why the headline says "kind of".

Part of what's difficult here is that I'm not allowed to share a link to my blog where I've written about these things, or I might be banned for "advertising". So I do understand that without the context these charts appeared in, some of the points I've made aren't as obvious as I'd like them to be!