U.S. is Tops in Cocaine, Marijuana Use

Source: blogs.wsj.com

The U.S. may lag other countries in measures such as education and health, but we’re out in front on cocaine and marijuana use.

Surveys conducted in 17 countries found that 42.4% of Americans have tried marijuana and 16.2% have tried cocaine, according to a paper published this week in PLoS Medicine.

On marijuana use, the U.S. finished in a statistical dead heat with New Zealand, where 41.9% of people said they’d tried the drug. The Netherlands — the place where you can walk into a coffee shop and buy marijuana — finished a distant third, with 19.8%.

The researchers, based in universities on several continents, called the U.S. “an outlier” in cocaine use: In New Zeland, also the second-place finisher for cocaine, a mere 4.3% of people said they had tried the drug.

The surveys were conducted as part of the World Health Organization’s World Mental Health Survey Initiative. The results are based on more than 85,000 face-to-face interviews conducted using a standardized interview process. The surveys will eventually collect data from 28 countries, according to this explainer.

The PLoS article reports on the first 17 countries to participate in the project, which include China and Japan as well as several Western European countries and a handful from the Middle East and the Americas.

A table with the complete findings is online here.