Marijuana's Dependence Liability Compared to Other Drugs A variety of estimates have been derived from U.S. studies in the late 1970s and early 1980s, which defined cannabis use and dependence in a variety of ways. These studies suggested that between 10 and 20 per cent of those who have ever used cannabis, and between 33 and 50 per cent of those who have had a history of daily cannabis use, showed symptoms of cannabis dependence (see Hall, Solowij & Lemon, 1994). A more recent and better estimate of the risk of meeting DSM-R.III criteria for cannabis dependence was obtained from data collected in the National Comorbitity Study (Anthony, Warner & Kessler, 1994). This indicated that 9 per cent of lifetime cannabis users met DSM-R-III criteria for dependence at some time in their life, compared to 32 per cent of tobacco users, 23 per cent of opiate users and 15 per cent of alcohol users" (Hall et al. 1999)
In the recent past, several studies have attempted to compare the health risks of the most common legal and illegal drugs. Two studies received special attention: a report by order of the French Health Ministry, the so-called "Roques-Report" (Roques 1998), and a study prepared for the World Health Organization (Hall et al. 1999). Major attention was paid to dependency/addiction caused by these drugs. The main results of these studies are summarized in Tables 1 and 2 below.
https://www.drugscience.org/dl/dl_comparison.html
