Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Travel teaches us a
respect for history. And
when it comes to drug
policy, I hope we can
learn from our own pro-
hibitionist past. Back
in the 1920s, America's
biggest drug problem
was alcohol. To com-
bat it, we made booze
illegal and instituted
Prohibition. By any
sober assessment, all
that Prohibition pro-
duced was grief. By criminalizing a
soft drug that people refused to stop
enjoying, Prohibition created the mob
(Al Capone and company), fi lled our
prisons, and cost our society a lot of
money. It was big government at its
worst. Finally, courageous citizens
stood up and said the laws against
alcohol were causing more problems
than the alcohol itself. When Prohibi-
At Seattle's annual Hempfest, 80,000 people call for an end
to America's prohibition on marijuana. On the main stage, I
talk up Europe's more pragmatic approach to drug abuse.
tion was repealed in 1933, nobody
was saying “booze is good.” Society
just realized that the laws were
counterproductive and impossible to
enforce. In our own age, many law-
yers, police oi cers, judges, and other
concerned citizens are coming to the
same conclusion about the current US
government-sponsored prohibition
against marijuana.
h e Dutch are not necessarily “pro-marijuana.” In fact, most have never
tried it or even set foot in a cof eeshop. h ey just don't think the state has any
business preventing the people who want it from getting it in a sensible way. To
appease Dutch people who aren't comfortable with marijuana, an integral com-
ponent of the cof eeshop system is discretion. It's bad form to smoke marijuana
openly while walking down the street. Dutch people who don't like pot don't
have to encounter or even smell it. And towns that don't want cof eeshops don't
have them. Occasionally a cof eeshop license will not be renewed in a particular
neighborhood, as the city wants to keep a broad smattering of shops (away
from schools) rather than a big concentration in any one area.
Statistics support the Dutch belief that their more pragmatic system
removes crime from the equation without unduly increasing consumption:
After 30 years of handling marijuana this way, Dutch experts in the i eld of
drug-abuse prevention agree that, while marijuana use has increased slightly, it
has not increased more than in other European countries where pot-smokers
