[TKDietz]

Ken, I like your posts, but why compare with the Netherlands and not the USA? You are making a good point but it would be a lot more powerful if people could see how numbers from countries that execute people for drugs compare to numbers from our country. People don’t know how our numbers compare to Holland’s numbers, so it’s going to be hard for them to see how the comparison you are giving is relevant to us. I’d suggest leaving the whole heroin post the same except talk about the USA rather than the Netherlands.

[Ken H]

I suggest leaving the whole heroin post the same except talk about the USA rather than the Netherlands.

US figure:

There were an estimated 980,000 hardcore heroin addicts in the United States in 1999, 50 percent more than the estimated 630,000 hardcore addicts in 1992.

--www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs07/794/heroin.htm

Using a population of 280,000,000, that works out to about a 0.35% addiction rate. That compares to a 0.3% rate for Singapore - which only counted addicts under treatment. My guess is that Singapore's true addiction rate would be higher than the US. Here's an interesting comparison of murder rates:

Dutch murder rate at 15-year low   

There were 201 murders committed nationwide in 2005, the lowest figure for 15 years, according to Elsevier magazine's annual Murder List. Amsterdam is once again the murder capital of the Netherlands with 32 people killed. [my note: Amsterdam pop. ~750,000]

-- http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=19&story_id=27342&name=The+Dutch+news+in+January+2006

Amsterdam, the murder capital of the Netherlands, had a murder rate of 4.3/100,000. The murder rate for San Diego, one of the safest big cities in the US, was 5.4/100,000; The figure for NY was 7.3/100,000. (NY and SD figures are for 2006)

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For crime stats in US cities: http://www.city-data.com

For nation to nation comparisons: http://www.nationmaster.com