Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
are being arrested. (According to a 2005 study, 23 percent of Dutch people
have used pot, compared to 23 percent of Germans and 30 percent of French.)
And for you nervous parents: h e Dutch have seen no signii cant change in
marijuana consumption among teens (who, according to both US and EU
government statistics, smoke pot at half the US rate). Meanwhile, in the US,
many teens report that it's easier for them to buy marijuana than tobacco or
alcohol—because they don't get carded when buying something illegally.
It's interesting to compare European use to the situation back home,
where marijuana laws are strictly enforced. According to
Forbes Magazine,
25 million Americans currently use marijuana (federal statistics indicate that
one in three Americans has used marijuana at some point), which makes it
a $113 billion untaxed industry in our country. h e FBI reports that about
40 percent of the roughly 1.8 million annual drug arrests in the US are for
marijuana—the vast majority (89 percent) for simple possession...that means
users, not dealers.
Many Dutch people believe that their pot policies have also contributed
to the fact that they have fewer hard drug problems than other countries.
h e thinking goes like this: A certain segment of the population will experi-
ment with drugs regardless. h e cof eeshop scene allows people to do this
safely, with soft drugs. Police see the cof eeshops as a i rewall separating soft
drug use from hard drug abuse in their communities. If there is a dangerous
chemical being pushed on the streets, for example, the police (with the help
of cof eeshop proprietors) communicate to the drug-taking part of their
society via the cof eeshops. When considering the so-called “gateway” ef ect
of marijuana, the only change the police have seen in local heroin use is that
the average age of a Dutch needle addict is getting older. In fact, the Dutch
believe marijuana only acts as a “gateway” drug when it is illegal—because
then, young people have no option but to buy it from pushers on the street,
who have an economic incentive to get them hooked on more expensive and
addictive hard drugs.
h e hope and hunch is that people go through their drug-experimentation
phase innocently with pot, and then the vast majority move on in life with-
out getting sucked into harder, more dangerous drugs. Again, the numbers
bear this out: Surveys show that more than three times as many Americans
(1.4%) report having tried heroin as Dutch people (0.4%).
Studying how the Dutch retail marijuana is interesting. It's also helpful
because learning how another society confronts a persistent problem dif-
