Dutch crack down on marijuana tourism
And what's more, Dutch youth aren't even interested in smoking weed.
These were the headlines that intrigued me but when I read the whole article, something just doesn't make sense............
http://www.globalpost.com/...
And that's the link to the full article, but here are the points I'd like to make. Now I know in the grand scheme of things these days, this is not a big deal. But it is an example perhaps about how bad policy is made and how sometimes, good policy that is working is attacked by the social mores of others and bad policy follows.
AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands — ...... a French-speaking Arab youth(could be from out of The Netherlands - my comment in bold) ..........
A group of teenage English boys, their polite manners contrasting with .................. hungry gull as two Spanish girls debate whether to get high on "White Widow," "Blueberry" — brands from the marijuana menu — or to take a slice of the peanut butter and white chocolate weed-laced "space cake."
"Some specimens of my tribe, and I think I can include myself, are considered to be respectable citizens," said Michael Veling, owner of the 420 Cafe.
"We even have a working relationship with the tax office," added Veling,..........
So far we see a lot of foreigners at the famous coffee shops, respectable small business owners paying taxes etc. Sounds pretty good so far?
After 30 years of high times, Amsterdam continues to attract waves of youthful tourists eager to smoke a reefer or two without having to look over their shoulder for the cops. However Dutch attitudes are changing. Successive conservative-led governments have tightened restrictions on cannabis sales, while local youngsters seem increasingly indifferent to the coffee shops’ charms.
A report from European Union’s drug monitoring center made headlines in November when it showed young Dutch people lagged well behind many of their European neighbors when it came to smoking weed.
BAZINGA!!!!! So they are still talking about waves of tourists coming to Amsterdam to smoke pot and public policy changing to control this situation. However, please note that the young Dutch people are no longer smoking as much pot as before!!!!
According to the survey, 11.4 percent of Dutch people aged 15 to 24 had consumed cannabis over the previous year, down from 14.3 percent eight years earlier. The Netherlands was ranked 13th out of 23 nations — way behind countries such as Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic, which register more than double the Dutch rate.
DOUBLE BAZINGA...with statistics!! So, pot smoking is down considerably in the younger population...who are supposedly the most susceptible to doing drugs, if we make them legal...well at least according to the moral police.
In the 420 Cafe, the only locals in view were a group of 50-something friends of the owner nodding contentedly to the Frank Zappa and Jimi Hendrix tunes coming from the sound system.
Well, it's nice to know that there are some old hippies hanging around keeping some of our icons alive.
"It’s not as exciting [for Dutch kids] as it is in other countries and we had education together with the tolerant attitude, so our kids know about drugs," said Veling.
And here's why pot consumption is down amongst the young.
"Our customers are mainly from England and the United States, but because of the economic crisis the percentage of continental Europeans has risen," he said. "Last summer we saw the first wave of Chinese middle class, that’s a very promising market."
And the market is going global....while the Dutch youth continue to smoke less and less....I'll tie this all together in a second, I promise!
"There are all kinds of ridiculous regulations," said Fredrick Polak, a veteran campaigner for more liberal drug laws. "It does not work, it is counterproductive ... the state has no business interfering with individual grown-up citizens and what they want to put in their bodies."
Polak, a white-haired, 67-year-old psychiatrist who works at Amsterdam’s drug dependency unit, said Dutch authorities have caved into pressure from neighboring nations concerned that so many young people were buying cannabis in the Netherlands to take back home.
And here comes the moral police from neighboring countries, putting pressure on the Dutch because these neighboring countries have social mores that are outdated.
Polak complains that criminal elements continue to play a leading role in the cannabis trade due to an anomaly in the laws: While the retailing is tolerated, wholesale trade remains illegal, meaning coffee shop owners often have to get their supplies from criminal networks, which are also involved in illegal exports of the drug and violent turf wars.
Oh by the way, the deficiency in the Dutch system has always been that they legalized it upto the retailer but left the supply chain before that illegal, thus letting the criminals take over that portion of the supply chain.
So let me try and summarize this whole thing. The Dutch enact public policy that makes pot legal, for which they have been chastised and vilified time and again. Unfortunately for their critics, the public policy actually works.....their youth turns away from pot....exactly what the moral police want......
However, their neighboring countries, who have the exact opposite public policy towards pot now start putting pressure on the Dutch to change their public policy that is clearly working very effectively, and generating jobs and taxes by the way.
This seems insane to me. What the Dutch should have been doing is fixing their policy to go back to the producers and wholesalers and making that legal and taking the criminals out of the supply chain. Instead, the Dutch are caving in to their neighbor's demands and changing their policy to make it much more restrictive and cumbersome.
By the way, has anybody looked at teen pregnancy rates recently in the US...another public policy that has gone haywire and produced the exact opposite of what the moral police want. And experts put blame on getting rid of sex education...which the moral police insisted leads to more sex amongst teenagers and more pregnancies. Like I said, I know these are not earth shattering issues right now but a very good example of how the extremes in our society shape bad public policy that actually is counter productive to their real aims. This is why I wish California would pass the right policy in this case, help alleviate their deficits and prove once and for all that legalizing pot is actually very good public policy.