Drug statistics
As you will have heard, the UN says that Kiwis smoke more pot than anyone else. The figure quoted, eg, by the Herald is 9.1%-14.6% (they don’t say what the range means). It’s useful to look at the actual survey data, the NZ Alcohol and Drug Use survey, which is conveniently available online.
The proportion of New Zealanders who used cannabis at least weekly in the past year is about 5.6%, and the proportion who used it more than 1-2 times/week is 3.8%. For tobacco, the corresponding figure for more than 1-2 times per week is about 20% and for alcohol, 26%.
You can find statistics broken down by age, sex, ethnicity, frequency of use, and indicators of dependency (yes, people do get addicted to cannabis, just like to other drugs).
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »