<b>A hundred years ago, it was all legal. Question: Were society's drug-related problems worse back then, or are they worse now?</b> In Amsterdam, marijuana is easily purchased in the Red Light District's coffee shops, while a complete selection of hard drugs is easily purchased from the many African guys standing outside those coffee shops. With it's policy of very lax prohibition enforcement, The Netherlands has an incarceration rate only 1/7th that of the U.S. So... The Netherlands must suffer far worse drug abuse rates than 'The Land Of The Free', Right? Well, no http://www.drugwarfacts.org/thenethe.htm Lifetime prevalence of marijuana use (ages 12+) U.S.: 36.9% Netherlands: 17.0% Lifetime prevalence of heroin use (ages 12+) U.S.: 1.4% Netherlands: 0.4% Let's not forget all the prohibition related murders.... Homicide rate per 100,000 population: U.S.: 5.56 Netherlands: 1.51 Also: There were 2.4 drug-related deaths per million inhabitants in the Netherlands in 1995. In France this figure was 9.5, in Germany 20, in Sweden 23.5 and in Spain 27.1. According to the 1995 report of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction in Lisbon, the Dutch figures are the lowest in Europe. The Dutch AIDS prevention programme was equally successful. Europe-wide, an average of 39.2% of AIDS victims are intravenous drug-users. In the Netherlands, this percentage is as low as 10.5%." Also:"The number of addicts in the Netherlands has been stable - at 25,000 - for many years. Expressed as a percentage of the population, this number is approximately the same as in Germany, Sweden and Belgium. , There are very few young heroin addicts in the Netherlandslargely thanks to the policy of separating the users markets for hard and soft drugs. The average age of heroin addicts is now 36." Source: Netherlands Ministry of Justice, Fact Sheet: Dutch Drugs Policy, (Utrecht: Trimbos Institute, Netherlands Institute of Mental Health and Addiction, 1999), The prevalence figures for cocaine use in the Netherlands do not differ greatly from those for other European countries. However, the discrepancy with the United States is very large. The percentage of the general population who have used cocaine at some point is 10.5% in the US, five times higher than in the Netherlands. The percentage who have used cocaine in the past month is 0.7% in the US, compared with 0.2% in the Netherlands.*" Source: Netherlands Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, Drug Policy in the Netherlands: Progress Report September 1997-September 1999, (The Hague: Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, November 1999), p. 6. The report notes "*The figures quoted in this paragraph for drug use in the US are taken from the National Household Survey 1997, SAMHSA, Office of Applied Studies, Washington, DC".
-- So is gangster rap, candy bars, and rated "R" movies. Does that mean that we should just ban all that is bad?..if so, who is to judge??.. I think just about ANYTHING is FINE if it can be used in moderation. Enjoying things like gangster rap will probably not make you a better person, but people need to learn where to draw the line between a hobby and addiction. cm69
Yeah but..... theres a diffrence.... music and movies are not bad for you in a physical way.... where as pot and drugs are. I love to watch movies.... r rated or whatever.... i dont think its bad... i love being curled up in the couch with a blanket and some yummy treats whith the lights out watching a good movie.... even if its rated R. I dont think thats bad. Pot may also feel good..... but it slowly destroys you. You may... YOU MAY just start off smoking pot.... but that leads to other drugs. I mean who knows.... maybe one day you could find your self in the street corner as a crack head...... "hey mista.... suck your _ _ _ _ for 5 bucks? ...... I mean you just never know.
<b>Prohibitionists! Here's how your policies have backfired against YOU:</b> <b>Are you straight? Do you like having sex with hot young women?</b> If you answered no to the above questions, never mind. Do you enjoy having to worry about the threat of catching AIDS/HIV? Well, if not for your prohibition laws <b>AIDS would have never spread among North American heterosexuals in the first place.</b> Since the only reason to inject heroin is to stretch a limited amount, IV heroin abuse was practically non-existent back when the substance was legal and cheap. Your prohibition laws directly created the rise of IV drug use, along with the resulting spread of AIDS from shared needles.
<b>Prohibitionists! Here's how your policies have backfired against YOU:</b> It was called Vioxx. While not very good at relieving actual pain, it was later found to be GREAT at causing heart attacks and strokes. Under the guise of 'protecting us' by encouraging (at the point of a gun) vioxx scripts instead of opioids and Dipyrone, the U.S. government <b>murdered</b> an estimated 26,000 to 55,000 innocent victims- all dead of Vioxx induced health problems. Just a sample of the misery and death you can expect to happen, wherever politicians (instead of free markets) are allowed to determine what does and does not belong in your medicine cabinet.
your going off track. Ice cream is bad for you... especially the good ice cream.... clogs your arteries.... yet millions of moms and dads take their lil kids for a Sunday drive and get ice cream. Dad: hey kids ... who wants ice cream?? Kids: me me me me But have you ever heard: Dad: hey kids, who wants some cocaine? Kids? me me me .... huh?
Not really. Things like depression, can lead to cutting, suicide, and who knows what else. I enjoy R movie too..in fact its just about all I watch, but for a 5 yr old watching "Hell raiser" and porn..you could only imagine what kind of f--ked up person he'd turn out to be. Mental damage can transfer over to physical damage. Look at all these school shootings where the media blames pop culture as the culprit. Two kids who listened to Manson, and liked the game Doom killed all those people. So do we blame a musician and a few game programmers?...NO. I think it really just boils down to age, and maturity level. If people are aware of what certain things will do them, then the less likely they will be to abuse it. cm69
drugs should be legal, period. countless souls have died or ruined their health and lives because of prohibitionism. i lost many many friends becuase of aids and overdose. even i probably wouldn't have begun taking crap if it was legal, since the whole romantic-transgressive aspect of it that was responsible for luring me in would not have been there.