A new study concludes that the British government should definitely legalize marijuana.
The exhaustive research, titled “The Tide Effect: How the World is Changing its Mind on Cannabis Cannabis Legalization,” brought about an alliance of British Parliament Members (from opposing parties) who all agree on the study’s logic—the current prohibitionist approach to marijuana has failed miserably.
The report, done by the the non-partisan Adam Smith Institute, stated that current drug strategy “has failed in its core aims to prevent people from using drugs, manufacturing drugs, and to put a stop to the crime, corruption and death that is taking place on an industrial scale around the world.”
With a number of countries rethinking their views on marijuana and the wave of medical and recreational legalization that swept across the U.S. this past November, rational thinkers are concluding that legalizing cannabis internationally is the best option.
Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001, and within a decade, substance abuse was reported to have dropped in half. Uruguay adopted a similar approach when it legalized marijuana in 2013.
Although weed is not actually legal in the Netherlands, it has been widely consumed for many years in the country’s numerous coffee shops.
So who smokes the most weed?
Despite the fact that pot can be found just about anywhere in the Netherlands, Dutch citizens are not the world’s biggest tokers.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), that distinction goes to Iceland, with the United States vying for second place.
Data is not available for all of the world’s countries, but here is a list of the top 30 cannabis-consuming countries, measured by prevalence of use as percentage of population:
1. Iceland – 18.3%
2. U.S. – 16.2%
3. Nigeria – 14.3%
4. Canada – 12.7%
5. Chile – 11.83%
6. France – 11.1%
7. New Zealand – 11%
8. Bermuda – 10.9%
9. Australia – 10.2%
10. Zambia – 9.5%
11. Uruguay – 9.3%
12. Spain – 9.2%
13. Italy – 9.2%
14. Madagascar – 9.1%
15. Czech Republic – 8.9%
16. Israel – 8.88%
17. St Lucia – 8.87%
18. Belize – 8.45%
19. Barbados – 8.3%
20. Netherlands – 8%
21. Greenland – 7.6%
22. Jamaica – 7.21%
23. Denmark – 6.9%
24. Switzerland – 6.7%
25. Egypt – 6.24%
26. UK – 6.2%
27. Ireland – 6%
28. Estonia – 6%
29. Bahamas – 5.54%
30. Sierra Leone – 5.42%
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