Global use of Amphetamine-Type Stimulants Less Than Marijuana;
Greater Than Cocaine and Heroin Combined

While marijuana remains the most commonly used illicit drug, theuse of amphetamine-type stimulants is becoming a worldwide concern. According to a report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), an estimated 162.8 million people worldwide used marijuana in the past year in 2000-2001. The second most widely used substance is amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS), a group of chemically related synthetic drugs that include amphetamine, methamphetamine, ecstasy, and ecstasy-type substances, such as MDA and MDE. The number of people using ATS (42.0 million) is nearly double the number of people using cocaine and heroin combined (23.6 million). The report concludes that “tackling the ATS problem needs strong political commitment, better data, improved and targeted demand reduction efforts, including treatment, and innovative approaches to enforcement, especially for clandestine manufacture” (p. 23).

*These categories of drug use are not mutually exclusive as drug users frequently use more than one substance

NOTES:
Global estimates are produced using results from annual reports questionnaires (ARQ) submitted by governments of U.N. member countries, other governmental reports, and research results from scientific literature. Each of these country estimates are transformed into one indicator—annual prevalence among the general population age 15 and above. The ARQ vary in both the number of countries responding and in content, and some countries lack the monitoring systems required to produce reliable, comprehensive, and internationally comparable data.

SOURCES:
Center for Substance Abuse Research – University of Maryland , College Park
A complete list of sources is available at www.cesar.umd.edu.
United Nations Office On Drugs and Crime, “Ecstasy and Amphetamines Global Survey,” 2003. http://www.unodc.org/unodc/publications/report_ats_2003-09-23_1.html