Great news if you feel like scrutinising your drug habits: the Global Drug Survey 2018 has been released. The Global Drug Survey, which describes itself as an “independent research organisation that conducts university ethics approved, anonymous web surveys” on the usage of drugs, got over 130,000 responses from people in over 40 countries for the survey, which they ran late last year.
Their stated aim is to be able to better foster safer drug-taking habits regardless of the legal status of specific drugs, but it’s also served to shed some light on the habits of our nation’s fine bonglords and cokefiends.
First up: we are paying a shitload for coke. On average, we’re paying $AUD311 a gram, putting us in second place behind our adorable cousins in New Zealand, who are forking out an average of $AUD$337. To put this in perspective, people in England are paying less than half that at an average of $AUD131.50 a gram, while the Yanks are paying a measly $AUD88. Although, at an average of just under $AUD9 a gram, Colombia is laughing at all of us.
Not only do we love giving our hard-earned cash over in extraordinary amounts for the magic white powder that makes you the king of being awake, we also fucking love MDMA. Of the countries represented in the survey with more than 100 respondents who had had MDMA in the last 12 months, we came in at number three for average number of days in a year in which MDMA was taken (behind France and Brazil). Of those same countries, we came in at number one for average number of pills taken at a time (2.1, as compared to the global average of 1.3). Bloody change the words on our coat of arms to simply “Givvus the pills.”
Just like with coke, we also love paying out the ass for pills, forking out an average of $AUD28, just under twice the global average. Reckless bastards that we are, we also come in at 22nd for how often we tend to do a test dose with a new batch of pills before going in whole hog (19.5% of respondents said they often or always will, unlike the conscientious residents of Hungary, 49.8% of which are fastidious pillheads).
We also come in at number one for the average price of a single tab of LSD, which might demonstrate some sort of recurring theme.
One more weird tidbit from the survey: Yanks basically never use spin when rolling a spliff. We tend to a bit below the global average (49% for us, 66.9% for the global average), but the Americans, presumably swimming in a sea of nugs, come in at a measly 11.9%.
You can check out more details from the survey here and also some handy guides they’ve prepared regarding being less of an unsafe dickhead when getting on the pills.
Obviously, as a voluntary survey that only canvasses the sort of people who would a) find out about an internet survey about drug habits and b) fill it out, these results aren’t rigorously indicative of entire populaces, but a sample size of 130,000+ people isn’t anything to sniff at.
