Dutch Parents vs U.S. Law Enforcement

In the U.S. we spend about $60 billion annually on our drug war, about $213 per capita. That’s $213 each year for each and every person. If you’re a family of four, about $1,000 of your money goes to the drug war each year*.

The Netherlands spends a bit over $400 million, or about $24.00 per person. You did read that correctly – we spend about 10 times as much per person as The Netherlands.

In the U.S. we put the burden on Law Enforcement to stop people from using drugs (thus, our much higher cost), The Netherlands puts that burden on parents.

It’d be one thing if The Netherlands achieved the same results as we do. But they don’t. They blow us out of the water. Twice as many teens in the U.S. smoke pot as teens in The Netherlands. And the same goes for other drugs and all age groups.

Which system produces the better results?

As well, there are a number of by-products, or consequences, of these two approaches. One is that while the U.S. system teaches people to avoid law enforcement, the Dutch system relies on and teaches personal responsibility.

Which system likely benefits society the most?

Smoking pot is stupid. Continually spending money on our continually failed wars on prohibition is?

* Now, lest you think that you don’t pay much in taxes so therefore don’t bear much of this burden, think again. Everything you purchase has a higher price because of the taxes that the retailer, manufacturer, and distributors pay and because of the higher wages that they pay to overcome their employees tax burden. Trust me, you pay your $213 every year. And we haven’t even addressed the estimated $32 billion in tax revenue we’re missing.

Benevolent Drug Dealer

This morning I talked with a benevolent drug dealer. Lest you think this is a play on words, it’s not. We’re talking genuine drug dealer here. He sells pot, hash, cocaine, crack, and a small variety of other substances.

Benevolent? You betcha.

His goal is to either get his customers off drugs or at least get them using responsibly.

And he’s having pretty good success. On the latter one anyway. In the past year he said that 12 of his customers have gone from irresponsible, jobless, heavy drug users, to something much better. 3 have stopped drug use altogether and 9 have quit everything but pot which they smoke only moderately (though he said in a couple of cases moderate is in the eyes of the smoker.)

All of them have begun taking more responsibility for their lives. 10 have had jobs, 8 are currently employed, and every one who’s unemployed is looking. 4 of them have started taking responsibility for their children, 3 for the first time since they were born.

He said every single one of them is focused on improving their lives and that of their families.

But why a drug dealer?

“Not more than one or two of these would ever have even talked or listened to anyone from any kind of organization. They talk and listen to me.”

He started by selling his dope for slightly less than other dealers. Today, partly due to pressure from who he gets his stuff from, he sells for about the same as others. He has a steady supply of customers though, probably about 40 regulars. “I’m not worried about losing customers, for every one that I get to cut their use, 2 more come.”

He doesn’t push redemption on anyone. If someone becomes a regular customer he’ll let them know that there are options that he can help them with. From there it’s up to them to ask him for help. Well, sort of.

Similar to how my wife weaned me off of whole milk by suddenly buying only 2%, then 1%, and finally skim, he very slowly weans some of his customers off of heavy use. “It only works for about half though.” He says fairly unemotionally. He’s not underhanded about it, he just tells them that he thinks their use is getting out of control and that he doesn't want to lose them as a customer so how about buying and using just a little less.

“If I wasn’t here they’d all be buying from someone else so I’m not increasing drug use any. And I’ve helped a couple of dozen folks who probably wouldn’t have been helped otherwise.”

Let’s not fool ourselves though. I don’t think many of the folks he’s helped are people most of us would want around our kids. They haven’t become angels and I doubt most of them would even be candidates for Curtis Sliwa’s Guardian Angels. But they’re all doing much better than they were before. They’re less likely to commit any real crimes (as opposed to personal vice), they’re productive instead of welfare expenses, and it sounds like, as imperfect as they are, that some are becoming parents to their children which means that their kids will be less likely to become social problems.

This isn’t a perfect solution and certainly not as successful as our drug war that’s so effective in keeping drugs off our streets in the first place.

Bill, Gretchen, and Margaret oh my...

Interesting discussion between Bill, Margaret Hoover, and Gretchen Carlson about legalizing drugs on Bill O’Reilly last night. Interestingly Bill seems to be softening his typical hardline approach. Me thinks maybe he and John Stossel have been talking backstage…

Margaret Hoover said something like “If you legalize it then crime will move in. Crime controls vice the world over. Just look at what’s happened in Amsterdam and The Netherlands.”

If we had lower crime rates than Amsterdam and The Netherlands I might agree with that part of her argument, but… Per capita we in the U.S. have 2 times as many auto thefts, 12 times as many drug offenses, 5 times as many murders (we have 3.5 times as many if you eliminate those in the U.S. committed with a gun), 4 times as many assaults, 3 times as many rapes, and 1.5 times as many robberies. The only crime that they have more of is petty theft.

By most measures we have 2 to 3 times the per capita drug users as The Netherlands. As just one example, twice as many of our teens smoke pot as theirs. And who controls this much larger drug industry in the U.S.? Organized crime. In The Netherlands approximately 50% of the industry is through the semi-legal coffeeshops. We not only have a much larger industry but more of ours is controlled by criminal organizations as theirs.

OK, so much for Margaret Hoover.

Gretchen Carlson said “what do we tell our kids? Telling them that drugs are illegal is the best thing we have to hang our hats on. If it’s legal then what do we tell them?”

Here is an even bigger argument for ending our war on drugs. Telling our kids to not do drugs just because they are illegal is the absolute worst reason. The average teen in the U.S. is already so accustomed to breaking laws (mostly by drinking alcohol) that this is meaningless to them. “So what” they think.

What Gretchen needs to tell her kids is that doing drugs is stupid! There is nothing better to hang our hats on than that.