[Vision]

Oh yea, let's have pot smoking on every corner like the Dutch. Can we have crazed muslims murdering artists and leaving their hate filled letters attached to the victims by a knife too?

[md2576]

A study of FBI data released last year by a Washington-based think tank, the Sentencing Project, found that between 1992 and 2002, marijuana arrests rose from 28 percent of all drug arrests to 45 percent, while the proportion of heroin and cocaine cases dropped from 55 percent of all drug arrests to less than 30 percent

A pothead didn't break into my car, in the middle of the night, in my driveway, to steal my radio and all my work tools.

I had a chance to speak with the local running Mayor in my city and told him the cops were spending way to much time busting hard working family men for pot and not enough time catching crackhead, methed-out thieves. He aggreed but didn't win the Mayor seat.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Same old crap. Pandering to the lowest common denominator. Who needs any laws anyway ? After all, that's not going to STOP anyone, right ?

[Galveston Grl]

This is the circular conversation I have with my son who wants pot legalized: Son: It should be legal. Mom: Who is going to pay for the pot heads when their numbers grow and they can not function to their potential in society? Son: Pot does not effect people's performance. It is harmless. Mom: It is harmful. Son: it is harmless... (down hill from here) Mom: I know you are but what am I!

[aligncare]

...What they really want is full legalization of cannabis. Polls show that a majority of Dutch support that, but the government says it would run afoul of the international narcotics conventions that the Netherlands and most other nations have signed...

Regulations are well intentioned, but some are destructive in their results. The prohibition on marijuana is a good example. Look at the contradictions inherent in the Dutch laws. It makes them look stupid.

[LA Conservative]

I have no problem decriminalizing marijuana. The Air America and Michael Moore crowd with be the biggest beneficiaries. They'll have less money to give to Move.commie, less motivation to work for Kerry/Clinton in 2008, and sound even more ridiculous than they already do.

It's a win-win.

[Malesherbes]

I've spent time in the Netherlands - used to drive there on the week-ends from Germany - and I'm at a complete loss to explain it. This used to be a conservative country with deeply religious Protestants and Catholics devoted to hard work and self-discipline, i.e. with a strong moral streak. It has been turned on its head into a place where everything is tolerated and anything goes. The crisis that is arising - and will rise further - of a large influx of jihadists among them may wake the country out of the cannabis haze and into reality - but who knows? I don't.

[robertpaulsen]

"American rates have been falling while European rates have been rising."

Buried in the middle of the article.

[robertpaulsen]

"only about 3 percent of the Dutch population ... use marijuana in a given year, compared with 8.6 percent ... Americans"

Uh huh. And what about the statistics on alcohol abuse? I recall reading that the Dutch have a serious teen alcohol problem.

Maybe we shouldn't be comparing two obviously different cultures when it comes to the use of one particular drug.

[Trailerpark Badass]

Indeed, 30 years after the Netherlands began allowing open marijuana sales, only about 3 percent of the Dutch population - or 408,000 people - use marijuana in a given year, compared with 8.6 percent - or 25.5 million - Americans, according to the most authoritative surveys by both governments.

Hmmm...

[JCEccles]

But it goes further: Several countries allow government-funded "consumption rooms" for drug users, to provide them with social services and dissuade them from using drugs on the street. And at least four countries - Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain - have programs under which the government gives heroin to hard-core addicts and lets them inject themselves in a government-sponsored facility. That idea is profoundly controversial, but the Swiss, who pioneered the practice a decade ago, insist that it has dramatically reduced drug deaths and street crime by addict participants, who no longer have to steal or mug to feed their habits.

Who's picking up these costs?

Taxpayers.

Not a very good advertisement for libertarianism.

[Freebird Forever]

Antonio Costa, an Italian who heads the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime in Vienna, has little patience for Europe's tolerant stance

As if we didn't already have enough reason to dispise the UN.

[Wolfie]

ping

[Moonman62]

Marijuana can be sold and smoked in the Netherlands, but not grown or shipped.

The same loopholes and others existed during alcohol prohibition in the United States, and of course it failed. That's why the pot proponents want the same loopholes for their drug.

As for the Dutch, they might as well hand over the keys to the Muslims. Whatever happens to their pot laws is just a sideshow. It's just something to placate the natives as their country disappears.

[Sir Gawain]

Indeed, 30 years after the Netherlands began allowing open marijuana sales, only about 3 percent of the Dutch population - or 408,000 people - use marijuana in a given year, compared with 8.6 percent - or 25.5 million - Americans, according to the most authoritative surveys by both governments.

Put that in your dangerous and legal tobacco pipes and smoke it, Nazi drug warriors.

[Mojave]

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[Paul C. Jesup]

When someone makes an argument against marijuana, I think of how many lives that little weed has saved.

Unlike other illegal drugs, marijuana mellows a person out, and I think of all the people with high-stress jobs that smoke marijuana, on their off-work hours, to mellow out instead of going postal and killing all their coworkers.

Just think about it.

And no, I am not on anything.