These Charts Track Drug Usage Across The Globe, And The Statistics Are Pretty Crazy

by N/A, 10 years ago | 2 min read

Drugs are simply just a part of culture–every culture. There's no way around it. Abolish them and people want them for rebellious reasons and find a way to get them (remember Prohibition?). Make them all legal, and well, there you go: it's a part of culture. There's an unlimited amount of drugs anybody could be consuming at any moment of any day. So, what do these wide-spread drug consumers decide to put into their bodies to get that oh-so desired high? Let's find out.

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First of all, here's a number of your potential options readily available and what your vision will most likely become on most of them:

Sound fun? Good: you like drugs! And, you're definitely not alone. Looking at our United States readers on this one, you guys really like a variety of drugs and consuming them in massive quantities, according to some research done by Recovery Brands.

This chart breaksdown the top drug-using countries per drug, and as promised, the United States shows up near the top on a majority of these. What's that say about our culture?

The government seems to think what that says is that there needs to be a War on Drugs, and that's what leads us to our next set of statistics: Treatment vs. Incarceration. Other countries seem to think helping people who have become addicted to drugs by sending them to treatment is the way to go (doesn't that sound obvious), whereas the United States tends to just say: "Lock 'em up!"

As you can see, New Zealand and Australia seem to have things figured out when it comes to this process and the United States has a lot of soul-searching to do.

If you head over to IFLscience, they've also got a very interesting interactive map which outlines three important categories of drug use statistics:

• People treated for drug abuses
• Most treated drug type
• Deaths by overdose

So, what do you think: still going to be sneaking off to do a little of this?

If so, sounds like New Zealand is the place to take that risk.

*DOSE is in no way telling you to take drugs, rather simply stating the facts of the stats*