Hi tom,

>How does your country deal with drug users? Note *users* NOT dealers.

They're left alone. If the police is strict they can put you in jail, but practically it is never done. Our country has a very lenient drugs policy. We make a hard distinction between hard and softdrugs. In most cities there are so called coffee shops where you can buy and use softdrugs. These coffee shops are under strict inspection of the police. Other dealers of softdrugs are prohibited. Harddrugs are prohibited in any way. Because of the strict distinction of soft and harddrugs we have far less harddrug users than in other countries. Softdrugs, though not legal, are kind of tolerated. During a house party, most often there are experts, who try to control the use of drugs, by giving objective information about what it does in your body, and even checks the quality of drugs like XTC. At school children are learned what drugs are, what kind of drugs there are, and what their effect is. In our society we've learned to accept there are drugs and you can't win the war agains them. If you can't win the war you'll have to find a way to intergrate it in your society, much like the way of alcohol and tabacco.

The dutch government is always critisized because of its drugs policy by other countries like the US, France and other european countries. However lately we see that more and more european countries begin to see that the way we handle the drug problem result in less problems than theirs. For example the France government had a quarrel with ours about this topic, but lately it seems that france tend to do the same as our government. In belgium, it's the same. There there is a proposal to make all softdrug legal (though i've got to admit I don't know the details, maybe some belgian could come in and tell a bit more about this).

Some countries think if they would do the same as our government, soon everyone would be using drugs, but IMO thats humbug. I've never feeled the need to try drugs. A bottle of beer and from time to time a sigaret would satisfy my needs. About 40 - 60% of the kids and adults have ever tried weed (grass), but only a very small percentage continues to use it, and only a fraction of that goes for something stronger. In our country the social problems of alcohol and tabbaco seems to be much more of a problem than the use (and abuse) of softdrugs.

Walter,

>Current stats in the our country say that 70 to as much as 80% of new inmates are drug offenders. NOT dealers... just those that are addicted. There is a growing recognition in the US (in this past election the state of California passed a resolution mandating treatment for first and second offenders and no jail time) that our "war" on drugs has failed. I'm just curious how this is delt with in your county. Thanks