One in ten Colombians admit having used drugs at least once, research shows. Marijuana is the most popular of illicit drugs.
The results of the research were published one day after Colombian President Uribe clashed with the country’s Prosecutor General Mario Iguarán about the criminalization of the carrying of small doses for personal use.
‘Colombian vice-President smoked pot in Amsterdam’According to a 1997 publication in Dutch weekly ‘Vrij Nederland’, the then director of newspaper El Tiempo and now Colombia’s vice-President Francisco Santos is one of the ten percent of Colombians who has used drugs. Santos reportedly smoked pot during a visit to the capital of the Netherlands and admitted to have celebrated his 1990 release from captivity by men of Pablo Escobar “with a few friends and a lot of joints.” |
The study — a query among nearly 30,000 Colombians — was carried out by the National Drug Council, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission
According to the research, Eight percent of the Colombians smoked marijuana once in their life. 450,000 Colombians would have used the drug the last year.
The number of people having used cocaine is much lower. Approximately 494,000 Colombians used the drug once and 140,000 used the drug in the last 12 months.
The number of drug users in Colombia is significantly lower than in the U.S. According to the U.S. Department of Health, 46 percent of U.S. citizens older than 12 have used illicit drugs at least once in their life. 14 percent admit having used drugs the past year.