Conservative? I don't think so.
Posted on 05/07/2006 7:17:42 PM PDT by found_one
The Young Pay the Price for Dutch Drug Experiment
by Don Laigle
Ever hear a liberal or libertarian say that we need to legalize “soft” drugs like cocaine and marijuana because they did this in Holland and it was wildly successful? You know: kids immediately lost interest in these drugs and stopped taking them?
Here’s what Republican Governor Gary Johnson of New Mexico said on CNN on Feb 22, 2001:
“Holland has 60 percent the drug use as that of the United States by kids and adults and that's for hard drugs and marijuana both. So if you want to look at a country that really has rational drug policy, Holland would not suggest that it would be a worse alternative than what we've currently got.”
Gary was referring to the fact that Holland had legalized soft drugs and was implying that it wouldn’t hurt American kids a bit to have these drugs available. He was apparently trying to appear "progressive." He was not the only one.
The web is awash with the same kind of conclusions, drawn by liberals, that drug use must be legalized because drug laws are antiquated and the more we enforce them, the more drugs kids will use. In fact, a quick search shows that the number of sites that agree with this hypothesis far outweighs the number that don’t [1], [2], [3]. Guess we old fogies need to stop holding up progress, then, right?
I love it when objective information proves what people with common sense knew in the first place. On May 6, the web site for the Dutch paper Volkskrant ran an article on a group of mothers in Holland who are concerned about their kids’ drug habits. Seems drugs are out of control there. Surprise surprise!
The writer says (my translation):
“One out of every 20 kids has at least experimented with hard drugs such as cocaine [note that they admit this drug is not soft!] or xtc. Coke is becoming more and more popular as a starting drug. The mothers have nothing good to say about regular social services, which are usually located too far away.”
The article ends with:
“ ‘The problem is a major one and is prevalent everywhere’ says Bak [one of the moms interviewed]. She gets calls from mothers from all over the region with the same stories. Kids of 12 or 13 who deceive their own parents. School kids tell her that the lockers at the high schools are sold to dealers so that they can deal from them.”
Notice that it seems not to have occurred to any of the mothers to call for making these drugs illegal. They only call for help from mothers themselves tackling the problem. You see: banning drugs is now a dead issue in that part of Europe (and may soon be in other parts as well). There can be no reasonable discussion of legalization of soft drugs. That is “settled law.”
Does this sound like the “enlightened” Europeans are years ahead of us? More progressive? Just remove the barriers and kids will follow their good instincts? Kids only do things that are forbidden, and since cocaine isn’t forbidden in Holland any more, kids will stop taking it, right?
Christians know that man is born in sin. He does not have the sweet nature that European philosophers believe he does. In “L’éducation d’Emile,” Jean Jacques Rousseau recommends letting kids do whatever they want to when they are very young. For example, he says that it is foolish to tell a child not to break a window. The child should be allowed to break one so that he can see that breaking windows is not a good thing.
Today’s Europe is proof enough that trusting in human nature simply doesn’t work. And that whenever people try social experiments, it is the young who pay the heaviest price.
Let's pray that Europe starts to see how much they need God before it is too late. Truly it can be said of Europe: eyes they have but they do not see (Psalms 115: 5).
Don Laigle copyright© Laigle's Forum
Permalink: LAIGLESFORUM.COM/2006/05/07/the-young-pay-the-price-for-dutch-drug-experiment.aspx
Availibility and use are two different things.
Every single survey has shown that teens say marijuana is easier to get than alcohol -- yet teens use alcohol 2:1 over marijuana. Legalization (even restricted to adults) carries a societal acceptance.
And, despite all those restrictions (you left out the high "sin" taxes imposed by all levels of government) teens still use tobacco and alcohol 2:1 over easy to get marijuana.
"A substance that people want" being the key phrase. Two-thirds of the people passed a constitutional amendment to repeal the 18th and turn the alcohol legalization decision exclusively over to the states.
Do you think you can get even one-third to legalize maruijuana much less all drugs?
Conservative? I don't think so.
Are you proposing the legalization of all drugs or just marijuana? Do you think we will eliminate "a constant war that makes criminals rich, costs tax payers billions upon billions, and throws people in jail" by simply legalizing marijuana?
Then why is it used so much on the medical marijuana threads? I'll look for you LOLing some of those posts, though I haven't seen you do it so far.
Better yet, I'll ping you to those posts so you can LOL to your heart's content.
PLUS, drugs will still be illegal for those underage. Currently, 30% of marijuana users are underage, and I would expect that percentage to rise with legalization.
So, the government's manpower, money, and time will still be expended for arrest, trial, conviction, incarceration and drug treatment for that group of drug users.
You can't argue that MJ can alleviate symptoms of various conditions. I think it should be an available option, but I don't think it's a cure-all. Letting someone decide on their choice of medicine isn't really a laughing matter when they're dying anyway, but I wouldn't put it past you to laugh at a terminal cancer patient that wanted the freedom to use alternate meds.
It's a bad idea to start an article off with something as stupid as this: "Ever hear a liberal or libertarian say that we need to legalize “soft” drugs like cocaine and marijuana because they did this in Holland and it was wildly successful? You know: kids immediately lost interest in these drugs and stopped taking them?"
I've never heard anyone refer to cocaine as a "soft" drug. The rest of the article is short on facts. So at least one out of every 20 kids has experimented with coke or ecstasy? Note that there's no proof of this "fact" in the article. Also, how does that compare to other countries?
This article debunks nothing.
Hmmm, is that a black jazz musician in that poster? And what's he doing - shooting her up with marijuana? Hilarious!
Hey, I'm not the one who's laughing at anecdotal stories. I simply discount them as a basis for making medical decisions -- I favor research, peer-reviewed studies, and clinical trials.
You're the one who's LOLing and saying that "anecdotal evidence debunks nothing". I'm just waiting for you to repeat that exact statement on the medical marijuana threads, that's all.
I don't post on MMJ threads so you might be waiting a while.
The Foreign Ministry, Justice Ministry, and Health Ministry issued a joint diplomatic press release which can only be called wry understatement:
The impression had been gained that Mr. McCaffrey was coming to the Netherlands to familiarise himself on the spot with Dutch drugs policy. The Netherlands would not exclude the possibility that if Mr. McCaffrey familiarises himself with the results of Dutch drugs policy, he will bring his views more closely into line with the facts" (Financial Times [London], July 16, 1998, p. 2).
And why were they upset, you ask...
Whatever the reason this fact eluded General McCaffrey and his staff, it did not elude the journalists to whom he spoke. In less than 24 hours, the world's media caught and corrected McCaffrey's mistake. They showed that he had arrived at his Dutch figure by lumping homicides together with the much higher number of attempted homicides, and that he had not done the same for the U.S. figures. Thus, the Drug Czar had compared the U.S. homicide rate with the combined rates of homicide and attempted homicide in the Netherlands. The correct Dutch homicide rate, the international press reported, is 1.8 per 100,000, less than one fourth the U.S. rate (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek, July 13, 1998; Reuters, July 14, 1998).
It's a shame that he didn't link the article he referenced so others could read it for themselves.
Misconceptions about the Netherlands
The aim, as in many countries, is to reduce addiction to hard drugs and the crime associated with it. In the Netherlands, one way of achieving this has been to separate the markets for hard and soft drugs. The theory is that if soft drugs are brought out into the open and away from the criminal dealers, their use is far less likely to lead to hard drug addiction. Young people are free to try smoking a joint if they wish; they can do it openly and without coming into contact with criminals. The statistics show that under these circumstances, most young people do not form a habit. (Nuffic, the Netherlands Organization for International Cooperation in Higher Education, was established in 1952.)
Lots of interesting tidbits in there Doc.
Yep, those black jazz musicians were shooting up white women with marijuana. It was a huge problem back in the thirties!
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What a failure to control supply!
yet teens use alcohol 2:1 over marijuana. Legalization (even restricted to adults) carries a societal acceptance.
Alcohol has always been preferred over mj in the US, regardless of the changing legal status of each. So much for whatever point you were attempting to make.
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