WASHINGTON: The United States leads the world in rates of experimenting with marijuana and cocaine despite strict drug laws, World Health Organisation researchers said on Tuesday.

Countries with looser drug laws have lower rates of abuse, the researchers report in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine.

The survey of 54,000 people in 17 countries found that 16 per cent of people in the United States had used cocaine in their lifetimes far higher than the next highest rate, found in New Zealand, where 4.3 per cent of people reported having used cocaine.

More than 42 per cent of Americans admitted to having tried cannabis, closely followed by 41 per cent in New Zealand, Dr Louisa Degenhardt of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia and an international team of colleagues found.

Americans were also the most likely to have smoked, with 74 per cent saying they used tobacco at some time in their lives, although current smoking rates are far lower at 21 per cent.

The next-highest lifetime smoking rate was found in Lebanon at 67 per cent, with 60 per cent of Mexicans and the 61 per cent of Ukrainians having ever smoked.

“Globally, drug use is not distributed evenly and is not simply related to drug policy, since countries with stringent user-level illegal drug policies did not have lower levels of use than countries with liberal ones,” Degenhardt’s team wrote.—Reuters