[Wonder Warthog]

"A society’s first line of defense is not the law but customs, traditions and moral values. These behavioral norms, mostly transmitted by example, word-of-mouth and religious teachings, represent a body of wisdom distilled over the ages through experience and trial and error."

All true. But the problem is that you assume everybody is a weak-minded idiot, and that legalization will lead to universal addiction. This is simply not the case, and has never BEEN the case. Drug over-users are a tiny fraction of the population even where usage is completely legal.

These sources have data for the Netherlands:

http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/node/67

http://www.ukcia.org/research/DutchPolicyAndCrimeStatistics.html

From what I see, it looks like legalization would be a good thing.

[donna]

The Netherlands has a population of 16.7 million and is socialist.