Who Smokes the Most? The 5 Biggest Cannabis-Consuming Countries

Before any ranking means a thing, you have to know what is being counted. Most global figures come from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and its annual World Drug Report, which pulls national survey data into one comparable set. Europe is tracked separately, by the European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA), the body that used to be called the EMCDDA.

The usual yardstick is "annual prevalence". That is the share of the adult population, normally those aged 15 to 64, who say they have used cannabis at least once in the past year. It tells you how widespread use is. It says nothing about how much any one person gets through.

That distinction matters far more than it sounds, and it trips up a lot of headlines. Three measures get quoted, and they are not the same thing:

Here is the ranking, pulled from UNODC data and the national surveys that feed it. The figures are approximate, and they come from surveys run in different years, so read them as a guide to scale rather than a photo finish.

Canada tops most credible rankings of large nations. Health Canada's own Canadian Cannabis Survey found that 27% of people aged 16 and over used cannabis for non-medical reasons in the past year in 2022, easing slightly to 26% by 2024. Legalisation in 2018 did not invent Canadian cannabis culture. That was already thriving. What it did do was make people far more willing to report use honestly, which is part of why the official figures sit so high. Heavy use and full legality, lined up neatly for once.

The United States is a patchwork. Cannabis is legal for adults in many states, medical-only in others, and still illegal at the federal level. Through all of that, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) reports past-year use among adults at roughly 22%, and the trend has climbed steadily for years. One big nation, one famously visible cannabis culture, and it stays among the biggest consumers on the planet by whatever measure you pick.

Nigeria is the one that surprises people. The UNODC World Drug Report has put its annual prevalence near 19%, among the highest figures anywhere, despite some of the strictest cannabis laws on the continent. Nigeria's own 2018 National Drug Use Survey reported a lower cannabis figure, closer to 11%, so the true number is genuinely up for debate. Either way, the country makes the central point of this article cleanly. Heavy use and harsh prohibition can live side by side, and a country's laws tell you next to nothing about how much its people actually consume.

Few countries are as tangled up with cannabis in the popular imagination, and the data backs the reputation. UNODC figures put Jamaican annual prevalence around 18%. The country decriminalised small amounts for personal use in 2015, and it carries a long cultural and religious history with the plant. Its data runs a little older than some entries here. Its place near the top of the table has held steady for years all the same.

New Zealand rounds out the list. National health survey data places past-year cannabis use around 15% of adults, among the highest rates in the Asia-Pacific region. Cannabis stays illegal there for recreational use, and a 2020 referendum to legalise it failed by the narrowest of margins. Another reminder that high use and prohibition sit together far more often than people assume.

Israel earns a special mention, because it gets named as the world's number-one consumer constantly. The claim does not survive a close look. The figure behind it is almost always lifetime use, not past-year use. On the annual-prevalence measure used throughout this article, UNODC data puts Israel closer to 14%. High, yes. Well short of the top spots, also yes. The country is a genuine world leader in medical cannabis research, and that prominence seems to have inflated its reputation for everyday consumption well past what the surveys actually show.

Germany is one to watch over the coming years. Its 2024 move to permit limited adult possession and home cultivation is recent enough that the long-run effect on reported use is still anyone's guess. If the Canadian example holds, the most likely short-term change is not a surge in users but a rise in honest reporting, as people who already consumed feel freer to say so on a survey. The next few EUDA reporting cycles should tell the story.

Step back, and a clear theme emerges. The countries that consume the most cannabis are not, as a rule, the countries that have legalised it. Nigeria, Jamaica, and New Zealand all rank high while keeping restrictions of one kind or another in place. Legal pioneers like Canada rank high too, but partly because legalisation makes people comfortable enough to admit what they were already doing. A few caveats deserve repeating:

• Surveys are not standardised: different methods, sample sizes, and years make any direct head-to-head comparison rough at best
• Self-reporting understates use: especially wherever cannabis is illegal and admitting it carries a cost
• Prevalence counts users, not volume: it cannot tell you which nation consumes the most by weight

A handful of small Pacific nations post even higher percentages in older surveys, but the data is thin and dated enough that we have left them off the main list.

There is a second reason the rankings shift over time. Legalisation and decriminalisation keep spreading, and each change alters not just behaviour but reporting. When a country relaxes its laws, people who already used cannabis become willing to say so, and the official figures jump even if real-world habits barely move. So a rising number does not always mean a rising population of users. Sometimes it just means more honesty on the survey form.

What the data does show is that cannabis use is genuinely global, spread across every continent and every legal system. The map of who uses it looks nothing like the map of where it is allowed. That gap, more than any single ranking, is the real story.