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Cannabis is by far the most widely cultivated, trafficked and abused illicit drug. Half of all drug seizures worldwide are cannabis seizures. The geographical spread of those seizures is also global, covering practically every country of the world. About 140 million people, 2.5 per cent of the world population, consume cannabis (annual prevalence) compared with 0.3 per cent consuming cocaine and 0.2 per cent consuming opiates. In the present decade, cannabis abuse has grown more rapidly than cocaine and opiate abuse. The most rapid growth in cannabis abuse since the 1960s has been in developed countries in North America, western Europe and Australia. Cannabis has become more closely linked to youth culture and the age of initiation is usually lower than for other drugs. An analysis of cannabis markets shows that low prices coincide with high levels of abuse, and vice versa. Cannabis appears to be price-inelastic in the short term, but fairly elastic over the longer term. Though the number of cannabis consumers is greater than opiate and cocaine consumers, the lower prices of cannabis mean that, in economic terms, the cannabis market is much smaller than the opiate or cocaine market. Given the present status of knowledge, the extent of cannabis cultivation and production is very difficult to measure or even estimate. The two most widely used estimates of cannabis production vary by a factor of 30, ranging from 10,000 tons to 300,000 tons. A process of triangulation, that is, linking production to consumption estimates, suggests that a reasonable order of magnitude for worldwide cannabis production would be about 30,000 tons.
