Hey there!
In trying to determine the number of potential users of poppers (or video head cleaner/room odorizer/nail polish remover), I ended up doing a deep dive into this paper, it contains some interesting findings about popper use among adults in the U.S. based on data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) from 2015 to 2017.
The first thing to note is that the study relies on self-reported data. Based on that, the data here is more likely to represent a minimum number of users due to the nature of the product and societal factors that lead to embarrassment or shame: some responders may have “forgot” about the last time they bought Rush online. Plus, the survey doesn’t include some groups like homeless individuals and active military personnel, so the findings might not apply to everyone.
To kick off, about 3.3% of U.S. adults have used poppers at some point, which is pretty small.
For reference points:
- The CDC claims that 3.6% of the US population was taking adderall in 2016.
- NIDA says that 22% of people aged 12 or older in the US had used a tobacco product.
- The pew research center says that ~50% of US adults have tried marijuana.
- A 2023 Gallup survey says that 62% of US adults claim to drink alcohol.
So from a total US population standpoint, this seems pretty niche. The scope seems to change however, when noting that usage of solvent cleaners is super high among gay men, with 35.1% reporting lifetime use. For other groups, it’s lower: heterosexual males (3.7%), bisexual males (11.3%), heterosexual females (1.8%), bisexual females (4.8%), and lesbian females (6.3%). Keep in mind here that lifetime use means they’ve tried it in their lifetime, not that they’ve been using it their whole life.
The paper dives a bit further into this, stating that gay men are much more likely to use poppers, with an adjusted odds ratio (aOR) of 24.64 compared to heterosexual men. This “aOR” means that after accounting for other factors, gay men are about 24.64 times more likely to have used poppers than straight men. Other population studies indicated that poppers use is also higher with folks who have a college degree. I guess double scorpio makes for good study breaks.
The point being…this is very, very much a gay product specifically for gay men, and we can assume its because they want to have a pleasurable sex life.
Some additional information in the article state that a study from Atlanta, New York, and Chicago found that 20.7% gay men had used poppers recently in a sample of 813 people. Interestingly, studies from Australia also show significant use of poppers – 45% of gay men in Sydney and 42% in Melbourne had used poppers in the last six months.
With all that said, here’s my attempt at quantifying the user base from a “top down” numbers perspective:
- Number of US adults – 258.3 million (US census 2020)
- Percentage of Gay men in the poplation: 2.5% = 6.45M gay men
- Percentage of bisexual men in the population: 2% = 5.1M bisexual men
- Percentage of gay men who use poppers (best guess): 25%
- Percentage of bisexual men who use poppers (best guess): 5%
Est user base: ~1.7M active users in the United States.
Would love to hear your thoughts!
This post is brought to you by Unspillables Solvent Cleaners. The brand, while obviously unaffiliated with poppers products and this blog, has a side interest in social studies on the LGBTQ community.
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