I agree, though I'm sure there are down-sides to it I think the truly amazing part is that for Holland to be even a little bit successful in this area with open borders to the rest of Europe ( and hence the rest of the world ) is rather amazing. Sort of like Maryland trying a radical social experiment and having it succeed despite the fact they can't really control the behavior of surrounding states.

In any case, we pretty much know what doesn't work and that should be enough to have them take a hard look at the "war on drugs". A basic understanding of supply and demand economics shows making drugs hard to come by ( when demand is a heck of a lot more inelastic ) is only going to increase the profit margin.

In another life I had a chance to learn quite a bit about the heroin trade - starting up in the Golden triangle and Afghanistan and including trafficking routes through Turkey and Marseilles. It was rather amazing even then - the early 70s - how the traffickers could afford to lose multimillion dollar shipments and just write them off as a business expense the way orange growers figure they are going to lose so many bushels to frost.

A few years later in Miami some friends in DEA showed me how the narcotrafficantes in the coca business weighed money because it took too long to count <s>


>>Actually I don't see the law enforcement model as effective against drug use. ( I've worked a lot in this area here and abroad. ) I think laws against the crimes one commits while on drugs or to get the money to buy drugs pretty much cover what is needed. The biggest dent that could be put into supply would be to shatter the economic model that support it.
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>>I think drug laws need to be radically refactored. ( I applaud Canada for being ahead of us in both this and its attitude toward true freedom for consensual partnerships. )
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>I think the Dutch model is doing exactly the economic bust of the supply side. Being decriminalized, narcotics are not on the black market anymore, so the profit goes dramatically down and the crime industry isn't interested in it anymore. They give up or move to something else. The addicts get their doses from state controlled shops or clinics, uncut and clean, sterile needles etc, thus saving a bundle in medical cost. Since the drugs aren't priced on the street, they become affordable so the addicts don't have to go steal and rob to get money to buy them. And the expense of the vast prison population is also reduced. Also the manufacturers (Columbia and Afghanistan come to mind) get to deal with governments, not organized crime, so can now be controlled.
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>The addicts are under control, catch less AIDS, and can even be back to normal life. Crime rate goes down. This has been tried not only in The Netherlands, I think it worked quite fine in the UK for a number of years, until it was revoked under pressure.
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>Last but not least, various armed groups which were financed by trading narcotics now lose money, when they lose their biggest customers.