Netherlands coffee shops example
The 1970s introduction of coffee shops—where cannabis is bought and used in small quantities without penalty—led to no immediate rise in cannabis use in the Netherlands, where levels of use remain lower than the more strictly controlled US or UK.
One Dutch study has compared cannabis use in San Francisco, where it is illegal, with Amsterdam, where it is illegal but de-penalised: 62 percent of those surveyed in San Francisco reported having used it at one time or another as compared with 34.5 per cent in Amsterdam.
P.Cohen and H Kaal, ‘
The irrelevance of drug policy: patterns and careers of experienced cannabis use in the populations of Amsterdam, San Francisco and Bremen’, CEDRO 2001.
A more recent European study found that 15.8 per cent of young men in Britain were reported to be using cannabis at least once a month, as compared with 9.7 per cent in the Netherlands. EMCDDA Statistics 2005,
http://stats05.emcdda.europa.eu/en/elements/gpstab08a-en.html