Substance Abuse, Drugs, Alcohol

wo hundred seventy five million people worldwide use illicit drugs annually, which include cannabis, amphetamines, opioids and cocaine, with cannabis being the most popular; ¹ Twenty percent of the world, or one billion people, smoke tobacco.² Eleven million people worldwide use intravenous drugs, and 1.3 million of this population have HIV/AIDS. Another 5 million have hepatitis C.³ The prevalence of illicit drug use is largely unknown, and depends widely upon estimations, as such drug use and dependencies are often hidden.⁴ Over 21 million Americans from age 12 and older were facing a substance addiction in 2014.⁵ In 2015, international organized crime groups made a fifth to a third of their profit from drug sales.⁶ It is estimated that 240 million people worldwide suffer from alcoholism — 5 percent of the world population.⁷ High income nations have higher alcohol per capita consumption rates than low income nations. Abuse of alcohol causes the deaths of 3.3 million people worldwide annually⁸, making up 7 percent of male deaths and 4 percent of female deaths worldwide.⁹ The prevalence of alcohol-related deaths varies from region to region, with Europe having the highest rate of fatalities caused by alcohol misuse.¹⁰ In the United States alone, 80,000 people die alcohol related deaths each year, and alcoholism is considered to be one of the most preventable causes of death in the United States, just behind tobacco use.¹¹ Three of every four deaths caused by alcohol poisoning are men, and driving while intoxicated accounts for 30 percent of fatalities in the United States annually. Less than 8 percent of United States citizens who struggle with alcohol receive treatment,¹² and only 16 percent of people worldwide are able to receive proper treatment for their substance addictions.¹³