Taking the fun out of pot

[Mind's High Mailinglist]

Low rates of use in the Netherlands demonstrate that the best way to
assure teens will try marijuana is to tell them it's illegal
By Connie Littlefield, Citizen Special - Ottowa Citizen
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Taking/1143884/story.html

It's official: the Dutch have managed to make pot smoking uncool. The
Dutch don't smoke nearly as much cannabis as Canadians, which is
surprising because cannabis use is legal in the Netherlands. What can
we learn from this?

Cannabis is not taboo, as it is in North America, under prohibition.
That could be why there is no real attraction for Dutch youth to take
up the practice. UN statistics tell it like it is: 16.8 per cent of
adult Canadians have tried cannabis, yet only 6.1 per cent of Dutch
have (2007 World Drug Report, United Nations Office on Drugs and
Crime). Yet cannabis is legally available in one of 280 licensed
coffeeshops in the Netherlands. Obviously, there is no connection
between availability and higher consumption rates.

Despite the lower rates of use among adults, and despite the fact that
Dutch teens try cannabis at much lower rates than North Americans, the
coffeeshops are constantly threatened with closure. That's because the
drug warrior mentality has spread like fundamentalist wildfire across
the globe.

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