Somewhere between the headlines about legalisation and the headlines about crackdowns, a number slipped out that says more about the last ten years than either narrative: 256 million people used cannabis in 2024. That is a 40% jump over a decade, and it is now the single most-used controlled substance on earth by a wide margin — more people than opioids, amphetamines, cocaine and ecstasy combined.
The figure comes from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s World Drug Report 2026, published on 26 June, and was unpacked in detail by the trade publication Business of Cannabis. What makes this edition of the report unusual is not the headline number. It is what sits underneath it: evidence that the legal and illegal cannabis markets, which policymakers have spent a decade trying to separate, are starting to bleed into each other.
Key Takeaways. Global cannabis use grew roughly 40% over ten years, reaching an estimated 256 million past-year users in 2024, with prevalence among adults aged 15–64 rising from 3.8% to 4.8%. The reason is less dramatic than “the world legalised weed” — legalisation is real but fragmented, covering Canada, Uruguay and 28 US jurisdictions for full commercial sale, while most other reforms stop at decriminalisation or home growing. Meanwhile the product itself has changed: average THC in illicit-market cannabis in the United States climbed from about 4% a decade ago to 16.1% in 2024, and in the EU, UK and Norway from 4% in 1995 to 12.5% in 2024. The most awkward finding for reform advocates is that legally cultivated cannabis is increasingly being diverted into international trafficking — Dutch customs seized 65.5 tonnes in 2025, roughly four times the 2024 figure, sourced largely from Canada, Thailand and the United States. And attitudes are not softening in step with the law: perceived harm among American 12th graders has been rising since 2021, reversing a long decline.
The 40% Number, Explained — and Why It Is Smaller Than It Sounds
A 40% increase over a decade sounds explosive. Part of it is simply that there are more adults on the planet than there were in 2014. Strip out population growth and you are left with a prevalence shift: from 3.8% of the 15–64 population to 4.8%. That is a real increase — roughly one extra user per hundred adults — but it is a gradual drift, not a stampede.
It is also worth knowing how this number is built. UNODC aggregates national household surveys, and those surveys are not all from 2024. Some countries last ran one in 2004. Others have never run a reliable one. So the global total is an estimate stitched together from wildly uneven inputs, and it is best read as a direction of travel rather than a census. Cannabis is now cultivated in at least 155 countries, covering something like 96% of the world’s population, which tells you how little of this market any single government controls.
Regional differences are stark. North America has the highest reported prevalence at 20.5% of adults — roughly one in five. That is not the global norm; it is an outlier driven by a decade of commercial legalisation and the cultural normalisation that came with it.
An Evolving Patchwork, Not a Wave of Legalisation
The tempting story is that the world is steadily legalising. The report tells a messier one.
As of December 2025, only Canada, Uruguay and 28 US jurisdictions had enacted full commercial legalisation — cultivation, production and retail sale for adult non-medical use. Everything else sits somewhere on a spectrum of partial reform, and many of those reforms have stalled exactly where they landed.
Germany’s cannabis law, in force since April 2024, permits three plants at home, 25 grams of possession and non-commercial cultivation associations capped at 500 members — but no shops. The Czech Republic’s reform took effect on 1 January 2026, allowing adults aged 21 and over to hold 25 grams in public or 100 grams at home and to grow three plants; you can read the detail in our breakdown of the Czech Republic’s new possession and cultivation limits. Luxembourg and Malta allow home growing and limited possession, with Malta’s harm-reduction associations able to supply members up to seven grams a day. South Africa passed a private-use act in 2024 that, according to the report, has not yet been made operational.
Two countries are running genuine experiments rather than reforms. Ten Dutch municipalities are testing whether coffeeshops can be supplied entirely by licensed growers — an attempt to fix the decades-old absurdity of legal front doors and illegal back doors. Switzerland’s pilot trials had enrolled around 7,000 cannabis users across seven cantons by May 2024, and early results hint at a divergence between for-profit and not-for-profit models on product promotion and youth protection. Those results will probably decide which template the next wave of European reform copies. For a fuller map of where each country currently stands, see our country-by-country guide to cannabis law in Europe.
The Plant Got Stronger — and Nobody Planned It That Way
The potency numbers are among the clearest trends in the report. In the United States, cannabis seized from the illicit market averaged 16.1% THC by 2024, up from around 4% a decade earlier. In the EU, UK and Norway, the 2024 average reached 12.5%, up from 4% in 1995. That is not a small drift. It is a fourfold change in the active dose of a widely used substance, achieved without any regulatory decision.
The mechanism is unglamorous horticulture. Growers selected for high-THC genetics, switched to feminised seed, and moved indoors where light, temperature, humidity and nutrients can be dialled in precisely. Do that for thirty years and you get a different plant.
One finding cuts against the usual assumption that legal products are the gentler option. Citing an analysis of US cannabinoid profiles between 2013 and 2022, the report notes that dispensary cannabis and seized illicit cannabis share closely related genetic origins — but the licensed dispensary products tended to carry more THC and less CBD than their illegal counterparts. Legal does not automatically mean milder.
In Europe there is a second, uglier trend. Low-THC herbal material is increasingly being sprayed or treated with synthetic and semi-synthetic cannabinoids, some of them far more potent and far less predictable than THC. At that point the word “cannabis” on the street is describing the packaging, not the contents.
Where Legal Supply Leaks Into the Illegal Market
This is the part of the report that should worry regulators most.
Global seizures of cannabis herb and resin hit historically high combined levels in 2023 and 2024, driven mainly by Africa, which accounted for 61% of the total quantity seized worldwide in 2024. Resin seizures alone fell to their lowest since 2011. North American seizures have been declining steadily since 2010 — which sounds like a legalisation success story until you read the report’s caveat that this likely reflects changing enforcement priorities rather than less cannabis moving.
Because more cannabis is moving. In North America, product is increasingly entering legitimate commercial supply chains and then being diverted into international trafficking. Dutch customs seized 65.5 tonnes of cannabis in 2025 — around four times the 2024 total — arriving mainly from Canada, Thailand and the United States via seaports, air cargo and passengers. Antwerp, Rotterdam and Hamburg, long associated with cocaine, are now handling cannabis flows too.
The most telling statistic is this: between 2015 and 2024, 57 countries and territories outside North America named the region as a source of seized cannabis. In the previous decade, 11 did. That is a more than fivefold increase, and the report links it directly to the region’s expanded legal cultivation capacity.
This is a governance problem as much as an enforcement one. Track-and-trace systems, seed-to-sale reporting and export licensing were designed as domestic compliance tools. They are turning out to matter well beyond the borders that require them.
Attitudes Are Hardening, Not Loosening
The behavioural signal in the report is genuinely counterintuitive. Among American 12th graders, the perception that cannabis is harmful has been rising since 2021, reversing a long-term decline — and a similar pattern is emerging among adolescents in parts of Europe. Legal access is widening while public wariness is increasing.
Two caveats matter here. These are self-reported attitude surveys, not measures of behaviour, and attitude and use do not always move together. Research on real-world outcomes tends to be messier than either side of the debate wants: our look at seven years of legal dispensaries in California found that use did not explode after retail opened — it changed shape, shifting toward different products and different consumers.
On the health side, cannabis use disorders remain the most common reason people enter drug treatment in Africa and the Americas, and the second most common after opioids in Asia and Europe. The report is careful to contextualise this: cannabis’s overall disease burden is comparatively low, partly because it appears to lead less readily to dependence than the other substances in the same dataset. Treatment-entry figures also reflect who gets referred and by whom — in several countries, court-mandated referrals inflate cannabis numbers considerably.
What the Next Chapter Looks Like
UNODC keeps its own conclusions deliberately open, and that restraint is appropriate. Two things do seem clear from the data.
The first is that cannabis trafficking is becoming interregional, and traffickers are adapting faster to shifting legal and social norms than regulators are. Any country building a legal market now has to think about export leakage from day one, not as an afterthought.
The second is that the argument over public perception is far from settled. The reversal in how North American adolescents and adults now view cannabis harm is likely to shape public health outcomes over the next decade, regardless of what the statute books say. Ten years of reform has produced more users, stronger product, and a supply chain that no longer respects the line between legal and illegal. That is not an argument for or against legalisation. It is an argument for paying much closer attention to how it is done.
FAQ
Not directly, and the report does not claim it does. Roughly half the increase reflects a growing global adult population; the prevalence rate itself rose from 3.8% to 4.8%. Legalisation is concentrated in a handful of jurisdictions, while use grew globally — including in countries with no reform at all. UNODC frames the driver as a broad “continuum of gradual normalisation” rather than any single policy change.
Selective breeding for high-THC genetics, the shift to feminised seed, and the move to indoor cultivation where growers control light, temperature, humidity and nutrients precisely. It is the result of decades of commercial competition on both sides of the legal line, not a regulatory decision. Notably, US dispensary products in the 2013–2022 analysis carried more THC and less CBD than illicit-market samples.
Through diversion. Product is grown and processed inside a licensed system, then removed from that system and trafficked abroad, where it has no legal status. The Dutch seizure data — 65.5 tonnes in 2025, largely from Canada, Thailand and the United States — is the clearest example. Track-and-trace and export licensing are the main tools against it, and they only work if every jurisdiction in the chain uses them.
Almost certainly not in the way this article might suggest. Full commercial legalisation exists in Canada, Uruguay and 28 US jurisdictions. Most European reforms permit only limited home cultivation and possession — Germany allows three plants and 25 grams, the Czech Republic three plants with 25 grams in public, both without any legal retail channel. In most of the world, including much of Asia, Africa and the Middle East, possession remains a criminal offence with serious penalties. Laws change frequently; check your own national and regional legislation before assuming anything.
Disclaimer
This article is journalistic and informational in nature. It does not constitute medical, legal or investment advice, and nothing in it should be read as encouragement to acquire, cultivate, possess or consume cannabis or any cannabis-derived product. Cannabis legislation varies substantially between countries and, in some cases, between regions of the same country, and it changes frequently. Readers are responsible for knowing and complying with the law in their own jurisdiction. Anyone with concerns about their own or someone else’s cannabis use should speak to a qualified healthcare professional. Statistics cited here are drawn from the UNODC World Drug Report 2026 and reflect the limitations of that dataset, including uneven national survey coverage and variable reporting years.
