Ghanaians use marijuana over five times the world average, making Ghana the leader of the African countries and third in the world in cannabis (a.k.a wee, ntampi) consumption, a recent United Nations report found.

Marijuana possession remains illegal in Ghana, but its use is far higher than in the Netherlands where it’s legal and in Jamaica -the land of the "Rastafarians"

The 2007 World Drug Report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime says that 21.5% of Ghanaians aged from 15 to 64 smoked marijuana or used another cannabis product in 2006. The world average is 3.8 per cent.

In the report, Ghana ranks third in the world for marijuana use, behind Papua New Guinea and Micronesia with 29 per cent each. Zambia is third with 17.7 per cent, while Canada at fifth, leads the industrialized world, with 16.8 per cent.

The study, using the most recent statistics collected from each country — although some dated back almost a decade — estimated that 3.8 per cent of the world’s population aged 15 to 64 used cannabis in 2005. That was about 159 million people, down slightly from 162 million the previous year.

Cannabis accounts for the bulk of global drug use.

In 2006, about 200 million people, or five per cent of the world's population aged from 15 to 64, used drugs at least once. Of those, an estimated 25 million had drug dependencies.

The report found that for the other top drugs — cocaine, heroin, amphetamines and ecstasy — Ghana was under the international average for usage.
The UN report found that overall, drug usage around the world is relatively stable for the third year in a row.
"Overall, we seem to have reached a point where the world drug situation has stabilized and been brought under control," said the report.