Several publications have declared that the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)’s annual World Drug Report cites a 40 percent increase in cannabis use worldwide over the past decade. This parroting of percentages overlooks critical observations of the data and its analysis.
There are currently 193 participating member states in the United Nations. For the Drug Report, participants are required to self-report via surveys, which are then compiled by experts at UNODC.
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Discrepancy #1: Member states tend to downplay their illicit drug activity
Some member states take a NIMBY approach to their admissions of drug activity and throw their neighboring nations under the bus. Morocco, for example, infamously known for its quality hashish production, featured a government in denial prior to legalization in 2021.
The Moroccan Parliament officially passed a landmark law authorizing the cultivation, processing, and export of cannabis for medical, cosmetic, and industrial purposes, while adult use remains restricted. In Egypt, cannabis is illegal, but personal consumption is openly tolerated, while smuggling large quantities is punishable by death.
The Ambassador of Morocco to the United Nations in New York, Mr. Omar Hilale, who has held the position since 2014, insisted in a conversation with GreenState that Egypt has a much higher production and export of illicit hashish than Morocco.
However, according to the World Drug Report, the kilogram equivalent of seizures of hashish (referred to as cannabis resin in the report) in Egypt was 134,382 in 2024, while 344,850 equivalent kgs were seized in Morocco.
Discrepancy #2: People are coming out of their cannabis closets
Rather than a 40 percent increase in unregulated cannabis use, perhaps people who have previously unadmittedly used cannabis clandestinely feel safer admitting their consumption. There are fewer repercussions as acceptance and normalization grow and medical legalization gains a stronger international foothold.
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Are 40 percent more people using cannabis, or are 40 percent more people finally admitting their unregulated cannabis use?
Discrepancy #3: Medical Marijuana doesn’t count
Are those statistics potentially affected by the numerous people transitioning from the unregulated to the regulated market and consuming legally, as it has become increasingly available for both medical and adult use in various member states? Is the global phenomenon of decriminalization and/or legalization taken into account when compiling the statistics for the report?
According to Chloe Carpentier, chief researcher of the UNODC World Drug Report, who responded to The Cannabis Desk on behalf of Greenstate, via email,
“There is always a possibility that as social norms are changing, reporting of drug use may be changing too. Increases in the number of people who use drugs reflect not only real rises in prevalence, but also the availability of better data (including newly available country data showing higher use than previously used regional averages) and overall population growth.
“Data on drug use collected by UNODC, including for cannabis, does not differentiate between drugs acquired legally or illegally. As a result, the prevalence of cannabis use in countries that have legalized non-medical use includes both legally and illegally obtained cannabis. Medical use of cannabis is not included in the data on cannabis use, which, within the context of the World Drug Report, refers to non-medical use.”
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Once again, this report is compiled in part on the basis of information reported to the UN by Member States. Therefore, similarly to the Ambassador of Morocco to the UN insisting that the majority of hash production and export comes from Egypt, and that Morocco wouldn’t legalize cannabis before doing so, everything in the report must be analyzed with full knowledge of mitigating factors which could alter the results.
Discrepancy #4: Women are barely included in the report data
Responses to the UNODC’s report questionnaire specifically pertaining to cannabis are compiled with a ratio of 61,320,000 females to 194,980,000 males, or approximately 31.45 percent female participants. The ratio of females out of the total of 256,300,000 people surveyed is 23.9 percent. That means women comprise less than one-third to one-fourth of the surveyed participants, despite being approximately half of the planet’s population.
With half the planet’s population underrepresented and medical use unaccounted for, the report’s findings are open to interpretation. If more women and medical cannabis users were accounted for, the uptick in the percentage of global cannabis consumers over the past decade would possibly be much higher than 40 percent.
UNODC reported that cannabis “remains the world’s most used drug,” and “it is linked to more than half of all drug seizure cases worldwide, and accounts for around 40 percent of people with a drug use disorder.”