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The Dutch government and its people have proven for more than 30 years that it is more cost effective, humane, and practical to be "smart on drugs" rather than "tough on drugs." Here’s why:
The so-called American War on Drugs has been a catastrophic failure in every arena.
1. In 70 years the American War on Drugs has killed 700,000 American citizens, more than all its other wars combined and far more people than drugs kill.
2. And with 5,000 Mexicans killed in 2008 alone, America now exports murder.
The U.S. has five per cent of the world’s population but now uses 60 per cent of the world’s drugs.
America has the highest incarceration rate in the world with more prisoners than China or India.
1. U.S. prisons kill one-third of prisoners by age 45 and two-thirds are rearrested within three years, meaning at best they rehabilitate only one-third.
2. They are thus a total deadly failure as ex-felons can rarely get work other than dealing drugs, so America’s drug policy actually increases the drug epidemic.
The propaganda: “We wage this war to protect our children.” The devastating and deadly facts are:
1. We have deprived millions of children and teenagers of their incarcerated parent(s).
2. Kids placed in foster care have four times the death rate of those left with their parents.
3. This drug war has created an obscene teenage murder rate that’s nineteen times higher than in the Netherlands where drugs are legally available.
4. America has turned a million of its teens into drug dealers and has four times the death rate of prisoners on Texas’ death row.
5. Only 50 percent of high school students graduate in America’s ten biggest cities and only 40 per cent graduate in NYC, Baltimore and Detroit. In the Netherlands where drugs are regulated, controlled and taxed, 92 per cent graduate; that’s No Child Left Behind!
This War on Drugs is also Racism Worse Than Slavery ever was.
1. Whites commit the crime (87% of the drug users), while blacks do the time (74% go to prison).
2. This war has done much more harm to black families than slavery ever did.
3. America’s African-American incarceration rates are atrocious and prisons actually rehabilitate/kill about the same number.
4. America’s major cities have drug-war created ghettos, while there is not one ghetto in the Netherlands.
This war destroys the environment and increases global warming.
1. It has contributed to the deforestation of South American rain forests equivalent to the acreage of four U.S. states, while dangerously adding hundreds of tons of toxic chemicals to the environment.
2. It has increased global warming directly by this horrendous deforestation, and indirectly, as America is e the only industrialized nation in the world prevented from using the very ecologically-friendly hemp for paper, wood and hemp fuel, which could dramatically reduce its dependence on foreign oil.
Narco-terrorism: America’s drug war funds terrorists!
1. It’s totally immoral for America to wage a war on terrorists and kill innocent Iraqi women and children, while at the same time funding terrorists with drug cartel profits.
The greatest corruption in the history of the U.S.
1. It has caused more corruption of citizens, policemen, judges, etc. than anything else in America’s history and has also resulted in the trampling of the U.S. Constitution.
2. This corruption has now become international.
The Netherlands absolutely has the answer.
1. America has six times the Netherlands incarceration rate and still has four times their murder rate.
2. By making all drugs legally accessible with treatment available for anyone that wants it, the Netherlands has America’s one-fifth its hard drug use and half its marijuana use, which really makes no difference as no one dies from marijuana.
3. They provide extensive treatment, the only thing that has ever proven to reduce drug use and demand.
Economically
1. America squanders $70 billion on this war annually and this would pay for half a health plan.
2. America also loses the tax revenue from drugs and marijuana is the biggest cash crop in both the U.S. and Canada.
The Nobel Prize
Based upon Dr. Steve’s recommendation, NORML
is pursuing the nomination of the Netherlands for a Nobel Prize for their success and information is available at www.Netherlands4Nobel.
“Dr. Steve” is Stephen H. Frye, M.D., retired professor, University of Nevada School of Medicine.
Cell phone: 775/772-8868, PST
E-mail: Steve.a.reno@Juno.com
Author of We Really Lost This War! Twenty-five Reasons to Legalize Drugs
Web site: www.25Reasons.org contains the book’s Table of Contents and sample pages.
Stephen H. Frye, M.D. is an esteemed colleague who was born in Boston and educated at Boston Latin School and Boston University, and earned his M.D. degree at the George Washington University School of Medicine. After his internship in 1968-1969 at the San Francisco General Hospital, he was drafted as a physician and volunteered to serve in the U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Berets) during the Vietnam era.
After his Honorable Discharge from military service, Dr. Steve completed his psychiatric training at the Langley Porter Neuro-Psychiatric Institute of the University of California, San Francisco. He served as the Director of Mental Health for Sonoma County, Calif., for four years, then founded a private practice multi-specialty mental health group and directed it for 18 years.
Dr. Steve concluded his distinguished career by teaching at the University of Nevada School of Medicine before retiring. Dr. Frye then hosted a radio talk show in Reno called “Politics and Health,” where he first became interested in drug legalization.
After more than three years of full-time study and research, he has become an expert on drug issues. He’s the divorced father of two adult sons, and is also a pianist, sailor, skier, a Northern Nevada resident, and world traveler, having visited 45 countries, 44 states, and 8 Canadian provinces.
Allen St. Pierre
Executive Director
NORML/NORML Foundation
Washington, DC
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I have felt this way about drugs and sex work for a very long time now.
I have traveled through the Netherlands and was very impressed by the civility, cleanliness, and equality that these educated and happy people enjoy.
Will America ever evolve?
John