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.

Almost Legal

Election day is always exciting for me, even when my candidates or ballot measures lose. It’s democracy in action like nowhere else on earth. Even though I very strongly disagree with his policy positions, it was still kind of exciting to see Barrack Obama elected in 2008 - we elected our first black president and we saw the power of citizens.

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California’s Prop 19, to fully legalize marijuana, didn’t pass. Latest results have it at 46.5% Yes to 53.6% No. Much of the news media are touting this as much more of a defeat than it really is though.

Think back perhaps 10 or 20 years. Would there have even been 20% support for such a measure? My guess is that pot will be decriminalized in California within 4 years. The war on it has simply proven too costly for too little benefit.

For the pro-legalization crowd there may even be a very substantial silver lining in this defeat. If this had passed it would have made California the only place in all of North America where pot could be legally purchased. Similar to what happened in The Netherlands, potheads would have flocked to California to experience smoking pot legally.

It’s one thing for the local populace to smoke it legally, it’s another to have an influx of potheads*.

There will very likely be several additional states joining California with legalization propositions on their ballots in 2012 and 2014. My guess is that California will still be the first, but a handful of others will follow two and four years later.

Just having a proposition like this on the ballot in all of these states will send a message to law enforcement and the judiciary that criminalizing pot is far from universally supported. Having 45% of the citizenry say so in an election sends an even stronger message. This, together with states legalizing medical marijuana, will ease enforcement efforts in these states, and thus, help reduce pot tourism to California.


* Potheads are generally not a problematic bunch. Just compare the crowds in a pot selling coffeeshop in Amsterdam to those in a bar, there or in the U.S. I’ll take the potheads any day.

Amsterdam is, even with their high pot and prostitution tourism, mostly U.S. folk, united in saying that they do not want to again criminalize these vices. They do not want the problems we have with prohibitions. However, as I discussed here, some of the border cities, such as Maastricht, are limiting sales to citizens only.

Environmentally Concious Drug Smugglers !

In this article on FoxNews we learn that drug smugglers are, if nothing else, Green. My first thought was that if drug smugglers can build an electric boat, certainly our recreational boat companies in the U.S. can. On second thought though, the drug smugglers are probably much better funded. Speaking of electric boats, no recent news from Correct Craft on their experimentation with a Tesla provided drivetrain.

In Defense of Pot Heads ?

Before delving in to this let me make one thing clear. SMOKING POT IS STUPID! It is not harmless. It messes with peoples mental ability.

But then, we all do stupid things occasionally don’t we?

I recently met a guy named Marcus. Marcus is African American, 37-years-old, dropped out of school in 11th grade, has 4 kids (that he knows of), and lives with the mother of the two youngest along with his second child. He doesn’t know where his first child, Sarah is. Sarah’s mother moved away with her soon after she was born. Marcus has a couple of arrests on his record for drug possession, once for cocaine, once for pot. Thanks to prison over-crowding he was given probation both times instead of a jail sentence. He no longer does cocaine, but still gets together with friends once or twice a week to smoke a joint in the garage behind his house.

I drove by his house one day. This is not a neighborhood I felt very comfortable in and I’ve spent some time in some pretty unappealing and rough neighborhoods. I didn’t even slow down when I drove by. His house is a 1940’s 500 square foot pseudo Cap Cod in need of a lot of work. I also saw the 1 car parallelogram shaped garage in back where he and his friends smoke their pot.

So, what do you think about Marcus? Sound like a problem? Not someone you’d want living next door to you? Someone with a lot of things in his life to fix? Should he be arrested and convicted for dealing and smoking pot? Think his children should be taken away from him?

I met Marcus through a mutual acquaintance, one of the people Marcus smokes a joint with occasionally. Our mutual acquaintance just so happens to also be his
former probation officer. Marcus has been off probation for 14 years but they’ve stayed in touch because his probation officer has become a mentor to Marcus for these many years. It was his probation officer who, a year after his probation ended, helped him decide to quite doing cocaine, to marry the mother of his child, and to become a father rather than just a baby maker.

Marcus works at an industrial laundry. He doesn’t make much money but it’s a job and has provided 7 years of steady income. He knows the street and the local gangs and works to keep his kids free from them. Though he cut his own education short he’s intent on all of his children at least finishing high school. He doesn’t know much about college or ‘professional’ careers but he does know that he wants them to get jobs and be “decent”.

What good would it do to arrest Marcus? To throw him in prison? He may not be an ideal father, but he is a father. Will his kids do better if they’re visiting him in prison instead of having him at home?

And what about a pot smoking probation officer? I met him at a Christmas dinner for the board of directors for our state’s second largest charitable foundation. My wife is on the board with his wife (who is BTW, a VP of Engineering for a Fortune 100 corporation). Their oldest child goes to NYU and plans to be a neurologist. Should he be arrested for his pot smoking? What good would that do?

Both of these guys will tell you that they know that they’ve been permanently harmed by their pot smoking. I don’t disagree, particularly with Marcus, who exhibits typical pot-head slowness. My probation officer friend said that he has cut back to just once or twice a month though. Neither of them believes that any future harm from their occasional use is worth giving it up.

On this last point I strongly disagree. I think that their current and future use, even just once or twice per month, will harm them. I also think that their actions are harming their families.

On the other hand, they are both, from everything I’ve been able to tell, decent husbands and pretty good fathers.

Is it possible that a pot head can also be a good spouse, father, and citizen? Probable even?

Our society’s solution is to arrest Marcus. Is that the right thing to do?

Dissapointment in John Stossel

It was great to see John Stossel on Bill O’Reilly tonight. I’m not sure if John was completely unprepared or if he was intentionally deferring a bit to Bill in his first appearance on his new network… In any case, he was weak. And even admitted it.

In their discussion on legalizing drugs O’Reilly used as his primary argument the harm that drugs do and several times used as an argument that people buy pot legally in California medicinal clinics and sell it to school kids in order to buy their own hard drugs. And THAT is why we need to continue our war on drugs.

Let’s consider… With our current 40 to 50 year old war on drugs we have a worse drug problem than any country in Europe. Our war is doing absolutely nothing to stem to flow of drugs in to the U.S. nor to reduce the abuse of drugs. Our war though is leading to hundreds of innocent deaths every year such as the recent killing of Jonathan Ayers. By most estimates over 90% of corruption in our law enforcement community is related to vice prohibition laws (drugs, prostitution, gambling, and underage alcohol). Generals in Afghanistan and Iraq have estimated that over 60% of funding for the Taliban and al Qaeda has come from illicit drug sales, mostly to the U.S.

Perhaps more damning is that it’s easier for high school folk in the U.S. to obtain drugs than it is for them in countries such as The Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland who are taking a much different approach. About twice as many of our high school students smoke pot as do those in Amsterdam!

I’m looking forward to seeing this debate again with a much better prepared Stossel.