"world's largest consumer of cocaine (shipped from Colombia through Mexico and the Caribbean), Colombian heroin, and Mexican heroin and marijuana; major consumer of ecstasy and Mexican methamphetamine; minor consumer of high-quality Southeast Asian heroin; illicit producer of cannabis, marijuana, depressants, stimulants, hallucinogens, and methamphetamine; money-laundering center"

Above is the staement on the CIA world fact book

Simple answer: We can affort them
Really at the end of the day we consume, because we can. Plz I am not talking about individual consuption here rather there is a huge amount of capital that people can get there hands on in the United States. I mean what are people in 3rd world countrys going to use to buy Drugs?

More complex answer:
There is a huge percentage of Americans(almost 10%) that deal with depression that may lead to Drug consuption Legal/illegal. Not only that
"Everyone, will at some time in their life be affected by depression -- their own or someone else's, according to Australian Government statistics. (Depression statistics in Australia are comparable to those of the US and UK.)"

we get them hooked while there young:
"Pre-schoolers are the fastest-growing market for antidepressants. At least four percent of preschoolers -- over a million -- are clinically depressed."

Heres even more stats of young children already falling victim to drug usage.

"Percent of persons 12 years of age and over with any illicit drug use in the past month: 8.3% (2006)
Percent of persons 12 years of age and over with marijuana use in the past month: 6.0% (2006)
Percent of persons 12 years of age and over with any nonmedical use of a psychotherapeutic drug in the past month: 2.8% (2006)"

Further more i just went on the above the influence website and im really dissapointed.Check out there take here(http://www.abovetheinfluence.com/facts/whydrugs.aspx?id=search_whytakedrugs#). Maybe the real reason that we consume so much drugs is that we are extremely uneducated when it comes to them. For example (I do not use or have used marijuana) it states that "there are rumors that MJ has medical benefits" then they say "major medical organizations disagree" I mean that statement to me is so broad and just out there why not say what is actually happening that no one has really come up with anything conclusive about MJ because political Bias seem to get in the way of major studys regarding canibus? Yes there is countless studys on how canibus does this and there are more that say that it dosent basically if your for it you jump on the research that proves your point and vise versa.

People think its simple and are not really educated about drugs for example what are side effects of heroin? how does it work? did you know that researchers have stated that nicotine is the most addicting substance? can you become addicted to RX drugs, ect? the questions are endless and the answers most of us can provide are often few. Can we really just say no to drugs, because we were told by the tele that they were bad? why not give us some usefull information to help individual say no?
Yeah at the end of the day Perhaps its our lack of understanding that has push us far into addiction.
Source(s):
http://www.upliftprogram.com/depression_stats.html
http://www.dopestats.com/dopestats/index.jsp
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/FASTATS/druguse.htm
http://www.abovetheinfluence.com/facts/whydrugs.aspx?id=search_whytakedrugs...

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