Demos & Pi. Stoned Nation: International study of drug use places US in the lead. : Greg Laden's Blog. A study released today in PLoS Medicine compares alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drug use across seventeen different countries participating in the World Health Organization World Mental Health Survey Initiative.
Alcohol seems to be widely used in the studied countries, tobacco less so but fairly evenly used. Major variation was found with marijuana and cocaine use, with the US and New Zealand at the top of the list for pot, and the US as a significant outlier with cocaine use, to the extent that if cocaine was not used in the US, it seems unlikely that it would even be a major part of a study such as this one. Toward a Global View of Alcohol, Tobacco, Cannabis, and Cocaine Use: Findings from the WHO World Mental Health Surveys. Abstract Background Alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drug use cause considerable morbidity and mortality, but good cross-national epidemiological data are limited.
This paper describes such data from the first 17 countries participating in the World Health Organization's (WHO's) World Mental Health (WMH) Survey Initiative. Methods and Findings.
Open Data. Istat. Work. If the world were a village of 100 people.