Pot is far and away the most popular illicit drug among Europeans, with as many as one-quarter of adults in many member states admitting having tried the drug, according to a report published last week by the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA).
“In all [fifteen] European Union [EU] countries, cannabis is the illegal substance most commonly used, both in terms of lifetime experience and recent use,” the study concludes. “Use of other illegal substances is less common.”
Lifetime use of the drug ranged from about ten percent of adults in countries with the lowest percentage of users (Finland and Sweden) to approximately 25 percent in France, Ireland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Pot smoking was most prevalent in Denmark, with more than 30 percent of adults having used it. Past year use of cannabis was highest in United Kingdom and Ireland, as nearly 20 percent of adults admit having recently smoked pot.
Though marijuana’s popularity in Europe has risen over the past decade, authors did not believe that legislative changes relaxing marijuana penalties were a significant factor in the increase. Presently, only a handful of EU nations criminally sanction marijuana possession, and a growing number – most notably Italy, Portugal and Spain – have abandoned criminal penalties for the possession of all drugs.
“Differences in the prevalence of drug use are influenced by a variety of factors in each country,” authors wrote, “as countries with more liberal drug policies (such as the Netherlands) and those with a more restrictive approach (such as Sweden) have not very different prevalence rates.”
Ironically, a far smaller percentage of EU adults have tried marijuana than their American counterparts, despite Europe’s more liberal pot policies. According to the US government’s most recent National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, more than 34 percent of Americans ages 12 and older have tried marijuana – a figure almost double the European average.
Text of the full report, entitled “Sixth Annual Report on the State of the Drugs Problem in the European Union” is available online at: http://annualreport.emcdda.org/.
For more information, please contact either Keith Stroup or Paul Armentano of NORML at (202) 483-5500.
