| The States Should consider the Dutch Model. ArgumentSoutien1 #120797 The U.S. is at a crossroads in regards to legislation regarding Narcotics. The paradigm shift is at pivital moment, but perhaps the government (state or federal) should look onward to empirical examples of tolerance. |
The drug policy of the Netherlands officially has four major objectives: - To prevent recreational drug use and to treat and rehabilitate recreational drug users.
- To reduce harm to users.
- To diminish public nuisance by drug users (the disturbance of public order and safety in the neighbourhood).
- To combat the production and trafficking of recreational drugs.
Although drug use, as opposed to trafficking, is seen primarily as a public health issue, responsibility for drug policy is shared by both the Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Sports, and the Ministry of Justice.
The Netherlands spends more than €130 million annually on facilities for addicts, of which about fifty percent goes to drug addicts. The Netherlands has extensive demand reduction programs, reaching about ninety percent of the country's 25,000 to 28,000 hard drug users. The number of hard drug addicts has stabilized in the past few years and their average age has risen to 38 years, which is generally seen as a positive trend. Notably, the number of drug-related deaths in the country remains amongst the lowest in Europe.
In the Netherlands 9.5% of young adults (aged 15–34) consume soft drugs once a month, comparable to the level of Finland (8%), Latvia (9,7%) and Norway (9.6%) and less than in the UK (13.8%), Germany (11,9%), Czech Republic (19,3%), Denmark (13,3%), Spain (18.8%), France (16,7%), Slovakia (14,7%) and Italy (20,9%) but higher than in Bulgaria (4,4%), Sweden (4,8%), Poland (5,3%) or Greece (3,2%). The monthly prevalence of drugs other than cannabis among young people (15-24) was 4% in 2004, that was above the average (3%) of 15 compared countries in EU. However, seemingly few transcend to becoming problem drug users (0.30%), well below the average (0.52%) of the same compared countries
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