Which Country Smokes the Most Spliffs?

On Wednesday, the Global Drug Survey released the 2017 edition of their annual report on worldwide drug trends. There was a plethora of fascinating data included in the report, but one topic in particular was striking in its extreme contrast — the varying societal acceptance of spliffs from country to country.

For the potentially uninformed American reader, a spliff most often defines either a joint or blunt filled with a mixture of cannabis and tobacco. However, in many smoking circles, a spliff simply refers to a joint — those circles also tend to mix tobacco into their joints, so we’ll just refer to the mixed joints as spliffs to easily differentiate.

The survey asked nearly 70,000 cannabis users a series of questions related to their personal use of the plant, including frequency of use, motives for smoking, typical time of day that they use cannabis, and many more. When the participants were asked if they use tobacco directly with their cannabis, the results were staggering.

In the United States, just 8 percent of responding marijuana users sprinkle some tobacco in with their weed. That number is the lowest percentage among all of the responding countries,…