A World Health Organization survey of 17 countries, conducted by some of the world’s leading substance abuse researchers, found that we have the highest rates of marijuana and cocaine use.The numbers are startling. In the United States, 42.4 percent admitted having used marijuana. The only other nation that came close was New Zealand, another bastion of get-tough policies, at 41.9 percent

Some of the most striking numbers are from the Netherlands, where adults are permitted to possess a small of marijuana and purchase it from regulated businesses. Some U.S. officials have claimed that these Dutch policies have created some sort of decadent cesspool of drug abuse, but the new study demolishes such assertions: In the Netherlands, only 19.8 percent have used marijuana, less than half the U.S. figure.

Even more striking is what the researchers found when they asked young adults when they had started using marijuana. Again, the United States led the world, with 20.2 percent trying marijuana by age 15. No other country was even close, and in the Netherlands, just 7 percent used marijuana by 15 — roughly one-third of the U.S. figure.

It seems counter-intuitive to drug warriors, but the more you try to stamp out drug use through arrests and incarceration, the more drug use you get.  And speaking of prison, drugs are quite easy to get there, too.  So if we can’t even keep drugs out of the hands of people who are locked up behind prison walls, guarded 24 hours a day by men with guns, and searched and surveilled every day, how do we really expect to keep drugs out of the hands of free adults?

Understanding the Netherlands’ marijuana policy - USATODAY.com
Cannabis is technically an illegal substance in the Netherlands, although you won’t get arrested for buying or smoking it in a coffee shop.

The Dutch have adopted a policy of “gedogen,” or blind eye, to its sale and use since 1976. The government distinguished between so-called “soft” cannabis drugs and “hard” drugs such as heroin or cocaine. That’s when coffee houses sprang up to sell and let people smoke.

In 1996, the Dutch government began to crack down on cannabis cafes. It now licenses them, bans them advertising their product, prohibits sales to anyone under 18, and limits sales and possession to 5 grams a day per person. Before, people could possess up to 30 grams. Since then, the number of shops in the country has fallen by about half — to 720 in the country. Last year, shops were forced to choose between serving alcohol and cannabis. Most chose cannabis. The sales aren’t subject to tax. However, owners pay taxes on the income they make from selling it.

The government and cannabis advocates say that regulating the sale and use of soft drugs results in less hard-drug addiction.

The facts speak for themselves (references to 2001-2002):

• Percentage of citizens aged 12 and over who have ever used cannabis:  US 37%, Netherlands 17%
• Percentage of citizens aged 12 and over who have used cannabis in the past month:  US 5.4%, Netherlands 3%
• Percentage of citizens aged 12 and over who have ever used heroin:  US 1.4%, Netherlands 0.4%
• Rate of incarceration per 100,000 residents:  US 701, Netherlands 100

There are smarter ways of dealing with cannabis and hard drugs than locking people up.

The Irony of Holland’s Smoking Ban: You can Still Have Your Joint, but Only if it’s Pure - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News
In July, the Dutch government will introduce a nationwide smoking ban in bars, cafes and restaurants, aimed at protecting workers. But it will also make life a lot harder for the country’s infamous coffee shops, where customers will only be allowed to smoke pure cannabis.

…Dutch Health Minister Ab Klink has no plans to make any exceptions. Coffee shop employees, he argues, also have the right to protection from tobacco smoke.But [a coffee shop owner] claims it’s a specious argument. After all, people who apply for jobs in a coffee shop know that smoking is the company’s core business. “If the boys are old enough to be sent to Afghanistan, then you can’t tell me that people want to protect them from smoke in the workplace. They’re old enough to decide on their own. They can vote, they can go to war — but now they won’t even be allowed to make this decision?”

Perversely, the law, intended to protect workers from smoke, only applies to tobacco. In the Netherlands, that has resulted in a rather bizarre result: Smoking pot or hashish in coffee shops will remain legal; it just can’t be mixed with tobacco. If someone wants to roll their joint with tobacco, then they have to smoke it outside….

Besides, it will be difficult to monitor whether someone has secretly rolled his joint with tobacco or not. [Another coffee shop owner] feels the world has been turned on its head in Holland. “In every other country they do just the opposite — there they check whether there is cannabis inside,” he says with a laugh.

There are exceptions to the ban. If an establishment can set up a separate room or add a glass partition to ensure that employees are not exposed to tobacco smoke, then smoking is permitted in those rooms as long as service is not provided.

It’s also possible that officials will place a low priority on policing the smoking ban in coffee shops and, in a typically Dutch fashion, a situation would be created in which smoking would be officially banned but still tolerated.

I’ve always been leery of the indoor tobacco smoking bans being promulgated in the US and around the world.  I was a musician for many years and would have loved to have sung in a smoke-free room.  I get the point about employees not being subject to dangerous secondhand smoke.

On the other hand, some jobs have risks.  We still let men go into the bowels of the earth and mine coal for thirty years and they’re breathing far worse air than a part-time server would at a smoky tavern.

I can see banning smoking in public buildings, but I wouldn’t have banned smoking from bars (or in this case, coffee houses.)  Instead, I would tell workers that they have the choice whether they wish to work in an environment with dangerous air, but I’d also tell the management that they must cover at 100% any health care costs of their workers (that’s a US argument, obviously, since the rest of the world has some form of national health care.)  You’d see these business owners doing what they could to provide cleaner air, whether that was air scrubbers or banning smoking.

Dutch health minister says marijuana to be exempt from July 1 smoking ban - Forbes.com
AMSTERDAM (Thomson Financial) - Dutch health minister Ab Klink said visitors to coffee shops will be free to smoke marijuana as long as it is not mixed with tobacco, after a smoking ban affecting all restaurants and bars goes into effect on July 1.The minister was replying to questions tabled by parliamentary colleagues on whether coffee shops will become completely smoke free when the ban goes into effect.Current tobacco laws in the Netherlands do not cover the smoking of pure marijuana or cannabis in coffee shops, he said.

Coffee shops also will be allowed to set up separate smoking areas for customers who want to smoke marijuana and tobacco, although staff will not be allowed to serve or do other work inside those areas.

Minister Klink said he would look into the ban’s effect on coffee shops at the end of 2008 or beginning of 2009, including what percentage of coffee shops have opened a separate smoking area.

Most of the smoking bans that have been adopted in Europe and the United States point to the danger of the secondhand smoke from tobacco inflicting damage on the lungs of the workers who must breathe it in at work. As research has shown, even the firsthand smoke from cannabis isn’t as dangerous as the secondhand smoke from tobacco. It’s good to see a country where science and commonsense dictate the laws and public health policy rather than the reverse.

The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union wants to know. And the international drug czar, UN Committee on Narcotic Drugs head Antonio Maria Costa, just can’t answer the question.

Now who’s the one “obviously on drugs”?