U.S. and Netherlands Drug Policies

Paper Summary:

This paper explores the difference between the strict legal and political policies in play in the United States towards drug use and the relaxed attitude of the Netherlands towards this issue. It explains that neither attitude is the solution. To better understand the situation in the United States, an historical overview of the entrance of drugs into society is provided.

From the Paper:

"Virtually every country in the world has drug prohibition and criminalizes the production and sale of cannabis, cocaine, and opiates, except for medical uses, and most countries criminalize the production and sale of other psychoactive substances, and moreover, most countries criminalize simple possession of small amounts of the prohibited substances (Levine 2002). However, no Western country and few Third World countries have or have ever had forms of drug prohibition as criminalized and punitive as the United States (Levine 2002). Beginning in the early 1990's, drug policies in Europe, Canada, Australia and elsewhere began to shift away from criminalization of drugs, and no where has the pendulum swayed more than in the Netherlands (Levine 2002)."

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