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What I see with the chart is a growing aging pilot population. Not sure why the mention of cholesterol lowering drugs since there is no FAA medical standard for cholesterol. I’ve been on blood pressure meds for 30 years, all approved by the FAA. So are the drugs mentioned in the chart legal for that pilot by the FAA, or did the NTSB just lump all drugs found into the chart data? Not sure what the NTSB wants here. The Canadians have set 30 days as the waiting period to fly after consuming marijuana. I doubt there would be any support for drug testing of pilots not flying for air carriers. Considering that only .15% of pilots involved in air carrier flying test positive for illegal drugs, one has to wonder what benefit drug testing pt 91 or private pilots would be, and who would get stuck paying for that.

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Correlation is not causation.

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I agree with Matt. I’m not sure where the NTSB is headed with this. They seem to make a big deal about the rise of cardiovascular medications, but that basically tracks the introduction and then widespread use of statin drugs for cholesterol control. Blood pressure and cholesterol drugs have been well proven to be safe and effective and pose little risk to the user being impaired for flying. One thing not mentioned was the number of pilots who had alcohol in their systems. I suspect that was more than all the other drugs combined, or was there in combination with the other drugs. Sadly, alcohol remains one of the largest factors in fatal automobile and aircraft crashes.