You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
1.25 percent
A bipartisan and bicameral group of lawmakers has introduced the most Colorado legislation possible: the Keeping Our Manufacturers from Being Unfairly Taxed while Championing Health Act, or KOMBUCHA for short. Sens. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Reps. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) and Scott Tipton (R-Colo.) are responsible for this hippie nonsense making its way into Congress. Kombucha, a kind of fermented tea, is naturally slightly alcoholic — its alcohol by volume sometimes reaches 1 percent. Unfortunately, that’s above the 0.5 percent it takes to be taxed as booze. This bill raises the threshold of 1.25 percent alcohol. [Rep. Jared Polis]
31 percent
Dentists are responsible prescribing about 8 percent of opioids given to patients in the U.S., and 31 percent of the pills for Americans aged 10 to 19. [STAT News]
50 percent
When people claim to be Christian and commit violence in the name of Christianity, according to a recent poll, 75 percent Americans say that person wasn’t really Christian. But when people claim to be Muslim and commit violence in the name of Islam, 50 percent of Americans said that person isn’t really Muslim. [Public Religion Research Institute]
84 percent
Share of the time that a new algorithm from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was able to correctly identify an individual dolphin based on its calls alone. [Hakai Magazine]
$1,668
Median credit card debt of someone with a bachelor’s degree. Business school graduates have the highest median credit card debt according to LendEDU, a marketplace for student loans: The typical MBA is $4,604 in the hole. [Priceonomics]
$25 million
Daniel Lubetzky, the chief executive of the company that makes KIND bars, is contributing $25 million over the next decade to fund a group working to counteract the influence that huge food producers have on government nutrition policy. Lubetzky got interested in the issue when he learned that the government won’t let companies label foods like tree nuts and salmon as “healthy.” [The Washington Post]
If you see a significant digit in the wild, send it to @WaltHickey.