Ok, here's more:
However, what CATO refuses to publicly acknowledge are the devastating
results of legalization-decriminalization policy, as evidenced in the
Netherlands, where such a policy has been in place since the early
1980's. The president of the Dutch National Committee on Drug Prevention,
K.F. Gunning, M.D., reports that crime and drug use have skyrocketed
since the implementation of legalization in the Netherlands. According to
the Dutch Government, their legalization-decriminalization has resulted
in: A 250-percent increase in drug use since 1993; a doubling of
marijuana use by students since 1988; armed robberies up by 70
percent; shootings up by 40 percent; car thefts up by 60 percent.
The number of registered addicts in the Netherlands has risen 22 percent
in the past 5 years, and there were 25,000 new addicts in 1993 alone. In
addition, the number of organized crime groups in the Netherlands has
increased from 3 in 1988 to 93 in 1993. For good reason, the American
public has zero tolerance for legalization schemes.
Fredster, Fredster, Fredster,
You seem so aggravated. I'm not sure who the "made up statistics pot head professors" are that you are referring to, but here are some of the sources of the information in that link:
1- University of Amsterdam, Centre for Drug Research
2- US Department of Health and Human Services
3- European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction
4- London, England: Research, Development and Statistics Directorate of the Home Office
5- Netherlands: Ministry of Justice
6- Netherlands Institute of Mental Health and Addiction
7- The Hague: Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport
All of those sources are listed prominently on the website under each piece of information, so I'm not entirely sure what your grounds are for claiming that some pot-head professor pulled them out of thin air.
It would be nice if you returned the favor by providing the sources for your claims so I can check out the credility of your assertions. I'm not married to the idea of legalizing marijuana, you know. If presented with compelling evidence that legalizing marijuana would be bad for our society I'll just change my position on it. It's not like I'm going to be up nights thinking, "Oh god, what have I done? All this time I was misguided on the virtue of illicit drug decriminalization."
But if you truly want to reduce the drug problem in America, and some other countries policy appears to be far more effective than our own, you shouldn't just dismiss it because it doesn't make intuitive sense to you at face value. You shouldn't say, "I'd rather have a growing drug problem while Holland has a dramatically shrinking one than even consider the possibility that maybe they might have the superior approach to the problem." Don't let nationalism get in the way of being the best. If another country starts beating us we should plaigerize their idea. Any business worth its salt would do the same.