Marijuana is World’s Most Popular Drug: UN Statistics

Weed ranks as the most popular drug in the world, show statistics from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The UN also shows that opioids like heroin, opium and prescription drugs demand the most medical care. Opioids led to 42% of drug treatment cases in the U.S. — the most common drug requiring medical care in the country. The nearly 6% of people in the United States who get high with prescription painkillers and other opioids put the U.S. rate ahead of the less than 4 percent if Australians in second place.

At rates of more than 14,000 residents out of 1 million, New Zealand and Iran provided treatment for the most people for drug abuse and far more than America’s fewer than 7,000 per 1 million residents.

Drug abuse in the U.S. has placed the nation at or near the top of all the wrong lists. Americans pain pill and heroin addiction exceeds that of all other countries in the world.

Only Icelanders suffer more drug overdose deaths and ingest more marijuana than people in the US, according to numbers recently crunched by drug treatment research and marketing firm Recovery Brands from UNODC’s 2014 World Drug Report.



Source-Medindia