09/07/2007 00:00:00
Canada tokes at 4 times world average: UN
---
Canadians use marijuana at four times the world average, making Canada
the leader of the industrialized world in cannabis consumption, a recent
United Nations report found.
The 2007 World Drug Report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime says that
16.8 per cent of Canadians aged 15 to 64 smoked marijuana or used
another cannabis product in 2006. The world average is 3.8 per cent.
In the report, Canada ranks fifth in the world for marijuana use, behind
Ghana at 21.5 per cent, Zambia, 17.7 per cent, and Papua New Guinea and
Micronesia with 29 per cent each.
Cannabis accounts for the bulk of global drug use, consumed by 160
million people.
In 2006, about 200 million people, or five per cent of the world's
population aged from 15 to 64, used drugs at least once. Of those, an
estimated 25 million had drug dependencies.
The report found that Canada also had a high rate of usage for cocaine,
at 2.3 per cent of population, ranking it third behind Spain and England.
For the other top three drugs — heroin, amphetamines and ecstasy —
Canada was near or under the international average for usage.
The UN report found that overall, drug usage around the world is
relatively stable for the third year in a row.
"Overall, we seem to have reached a point where the world drug situation
has stabilized and been brought under control," said the report.
http://www.cbc.ca/
Source:
http://www.ukcia.org/news/shownewsarticle.php?articleid=12679
Author:
CBC News via UKCIA
|