A report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that 16.8 percent of Canadians ages 15-64 used marijuana in 2004, the highest rate among industrialized nations.

The CanWest News Service reported July 10 that Canada ranked fifth in the world in cannabis use, trailing only Papua New Guinea, Micronesia, Ghana, and Zambia. More Canadians used marijuana than did residents of the Netherlands, where the drug is legal, and the Canadian consumption rate was four times higher than the worldwide average of 3.8 percent.

In 2005, 8.7 percents of residents of England and Wales used marijuana, as did 12.6 percent of U.S. residents and 10.7 percent of Jamaicans.