Brazil is the world’s largest market for crack and the second for overall cocaine use, researchers from the Federal University of Sao Paulo (UNIFESP) said Wednesday.
A survey by UNIFESP’s National Institute of Science and Technology for Public Policy on Alcohol and Other Drugs found that four percent of Brazil’s adult population — nearly six million people — have experimented with cocaine or its derivatives in their lives.
Among adolescents, the percentage reached three percent or 442,000 youths.
Over the past year, 2.6 million adults and 244,000 adolescents said they used the drugs.
Ronaldo Laranjeira, who coordinated the study, said the South American powerhouse was now the world’s biggest consumer of crack.
“No other country has one million crack users currently,” the website G1 quoted Laranjeira as saying.
The study said Brazil, where rising prosperity has expanded the middle class, trails only the United States in terms of total use of cocaine and derivatives, with 20 percent of global consumption.
Brazil, the sixth largest economy, has 2.8 million consumers, trailing the United States with 4.1 million, while the rest of South America has 2.4 million, according to the study.
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