Marihuana is Common in the Czech Republic

In the well known Czech movie Samotari is this quote: “…weed is not a tradition in the Czech Republic”. Well, that time is gone. A few years since the film was made and Czechs score high in marijuana consumption among the European states; according to the 2008 Annual report of EMCDDA, we are right behind Spain.

The most smokers are in Denmark with their 36% who admitted to have smoked weed, though Czech Republic has many regular, dedicated and young smokers, about 9%, who admitted to have smoked in this year. In the category we are second, the first is Spain.

On the other hand, Czech republic is among the countries where only 5/million people die a year from hard drugs overdose, compared to 73/million in Estonia. So the report result can be read as positive – Narcotics grow out of fashion. But we Czechs shouldn’t feel too accomplished – there is still a massive number of kids smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol.

The Greens are, once again, going to present their decriminalization proposal this month. It probably won’t be passed in the parliament, as the parties are afraid of losing votes of more conservative citizens, however, the numbers speak clearly – to decriminalize marijuana in the CR will bring only a ‘paper’ change, as the numbers are already on ‘decriminalized’ level.