According to a Slate article, the US has “just 4 percent of the world’s population, [but] consumes nearly two-thirds of the world’s recreational drugs.” (Last paragraph on page 2) I’m perfectly willing to believe that we consume more than our fair four per cent, but 60+ per cent seems a bit unrealistic.
Any cites, sources or second opinions on this?
That seems exceptionally high to me, too. I would imagine that accurate statistics are rather difficult to come by when dealing with illegal drugs (or are they including cigarettes and alcohol in that statistic, too?), especially in countries that are too disorganized to keep statistics on much of anything. Even if it were true it would probably be impossible to prove.
Though it still seems high, I could conceive that we spend 2/3 of the money spent on drugs, if you only consider cash value here vs other places. Drugs are expensive here. 
Weight consumed is of course a different story.
This appears to be the source of the claim made in the article (I googled Joseph Califano 4 percent.)
I’d buy it.
Oh, you know what I mean…
We have a big population with a bunch of disposable income and a lot of them are bored shitless. Makes perfect sense.
USA! USA! USA! 
It seems like we consume 2/3 of the recreational everything else in the world, why not drugs?
And the other third? Keith Richards.
That figure seems iffy to me. This site says that the US is only third in the world for people who have tried cannabis and sixth for amphetamine use. These aren’t the prescription drugs talked about in the article, but they still make me arch an eyebrow at the 2/3 figure.
Do we really have any good stats on illegal drug usage in China? I mean, China has 20% and India 18% of the population.
America is closer to 5%, @ 4.54% per wiki.