Global health. The current scenario and future perspectives

201 Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD), Organization of American States (OAS) 17 . In terms of general population studies (covering ages ranging from 12 to 65 years old across most countries), based on available data at that time, past-year prevalence of marijuana use exceeded 12% in Canada (2015), Chile (2016), United States (2016) and Jamaica (2016 ) 18 , while it was below 2% in several countries mainly located in South America. In other words, the estimated prevalence in some nations of the region exceeds by six or more times its corresponding value in other countries. Similar patterns are observed when analyzing data from school population studies, mainly among 13 to 17-year-olds. There are countries with past-year prevalence of marijuana use exceeding 20% (Antigua and Barbuda, 2013; Chile, 2015; United States, 2016), while others do not exceed 5%. Regarding cocaine (hydrochloride), as a second noteworthy element, the heterogeneity described for marijuana remains, with lower figures of course: past-year prevalence use in the general population is equal to or higher than 2% in some countries, and below 0.5% in several others. It is true that there may be more recent data available for some countries mentioned above in OID/CICAD’s report (for example, in Chile, the latest general population study was conducted in 2018 and for school population in 2019. The United States has recent data from both populations for 2019 and 2020, like Uruguay and other countries). However, this does not change the central point we want to emphasize, namely the heterogeneity of consumption indicators between countries, and therefore, the great diversity that exists between regions globally as well as within our own region. The third topic that deserves special mention is opioid use, since it is causing a large number of deaths from overdose, despite its lower prevalence compared to cannabis, though higher than that described for cocaine as shown in Table 1. Opioids is a very broad category of substances including heroin and synthetic opioids (pain relievers per prescription) such as fentanyl. According to UNODC’s World Drug Report 2022, and as described above in Table 1, 61 million people worldwide are estimated (past-year prevalence of 1.21%) to have used some form of opioid (opiates or synthetic opioids for pharmaceutical use) in the previous year. According to the same report, this substance use has severe consequences for health, including fatal or non-fatal overdoses, and thus, in 2019, the use of this substance 17 https://www.oas.org/ext/DesktopModules/MVC/OASDnnModules/Views/Item/Download.aspx?type=1&id= 650&lang=1 18 In parentheses is the year in which the study was conducted in the country.