The Netherlands follows a policy of separating the market for illicit drugs. Cannabis is primarily purchased through coffee shops. Coffee shops offer no or few possibilities for purchasing illicit drugs other than cannabis. Thus The Netherlands achieve a separation of the soft drug market from the hard drugs market - and separation of the 'acceptable risk' drug user from the 'unacceptable risk' drug user.

Source: Abraham, Manja D., University of Amsterdam, Centre for Drug Research, Places of Drug Purchase in The Netherlands (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam, September 1999), pp. 1-5.

Comparing Important Drug and Violence Indicators

Social Indicator	Years	USA	Netherlands
Lifetime prevalence of marijuana use (ages 12+)	1998 vs. 1997	33%1	15.6%2
Past month prevalence of marijuana use (ages 12+)	1998 vs. 1997	5%3	2.5%4
Lifetime prevalence of heroin use (ages 12+)	1998 vs. 1997	1.1%5	0.3%6
Incarceration Rate per 100,000 population	1997 vs. 1996	6457	77.38
Per capita spending on drug-related law enforcement	1997 vs. 1995	$819	$2710
Homicide rate per 100,000 population	1995 vs. 1995	811	1.812

Source 1: US Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: Main Findings 1998 (Washington, DC: US Department of Health and Human Services, March 2000), pp. 18, 24

Source 2: Abraham, Manja D., Cohen, Peter D.A., van Til, Roelf-Jan, and de Winter, Marielle A.L., University of Amsterdam, Centre for Drug Research, Licit and Illicit Drug Use in the Netherlands, 1997 (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam, September 1999), pp. 39, 45.

Source 3: US Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: Main Findings 1998 (Washington, DC: US Department of Health and Human Services, March 2000), pp. 18, 24.

Source 4: Abraham, Manja D., Cohen, Peter D.A., van Til, Roelf-Jan, and de Winter, Marielle A.L., University of Amsterdam, Centre for Drug Research, Licit and Illicit Drug Use in the Netherlands, 1997 (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam, September 1999), pp. 39, 47.

Source 5: US Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: Main Findings 1998 (Washington, DC: US Department of Health and Human Services, March 2000), pp. 24, 62.

Source 6: Abraham, Manja D., Cohen, Peter D.A., van Til, Roelf-Jan, and de Winter, Marielle A.L., University of Amsterdam, Centre for Drug Research, Licit and Illicit Drug Use in the Netherlands, 1997 (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam, September 1999), pp. 40, 45.

Source 7: Bureau of Justice Statistics; Based on total U.S. population in 1997 of 267,636,000 as per the U.S. Census Bureau.

Source 8: According to the Dutch Bureau of Statistics, CBS Voorburg, as of September 30, 1996 the Netherlands had 11,931 prisoners with an approximate population of 15,424,122. This data was provided by a statistician at CBS Voorburg and obtained from Statistics Netherlands: Statistical Yearbook 1998, p. 434, table 53.

Source 9: Office of National Drug Control Policy, National Drug Control Strategy, 1997: Budget Summary, Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office (1997); MacCoun, R. & Reuter, P., "Interpreting Dutch Cannabis Policy: Reasoning by Analogy in the Legalization Debate," Science, 278: 47 (1997); Based on total U.S. population in 1997 of 267,636,000 as per U.S. Census Bureau.

Source 10: Drug-related law enforcement spending in the Netherlands in 1995 is estimated at 640 million Dutch gilders according to the Dutch Justice Department.

Source 11: The FBI reported that the homicide rate in 1995 was 8 per 100,000 people, for a total of 21,597 homicides. (Uniform Crime Reports: Dept. of Justice Press Release, Oct. 13, 1996).

Source 12: In both 1995 and 1996, the Netherlands recorded 273 homicides, which is a homicide rate of 1.8 persons per 100,000 inhabitants. (Registered Murders in the Netherlands, Press Release, CBS Voorburg - Statistics Netherlands, 7/14/98).

"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%."

Source: Netherlands Ministry of Justice, Fact Sheet: Dutch Drugs Policy, (Utrecht: Trimbos Institute, Netherlands Institute of Mental Health and Addiction, 1999), from the Netherlands Justice Ministry website at http://www.minjust.nl:8080/a_beleid/fact/cfact7.htm.

"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 Netherlands, largely 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), from the Netherlands Justice Ministry website at http://www.minjust.nl:8080/a_beleid/fact/cfact7.htm.

"Cannabis use among young people has also increased in most Western European countries and in the US. The rate of (cannabis) use among young people in the US is much higher than in the Netherlands, and Great Britain and Ireland also have relatively larger numbers of school students who use cannabis."

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. 7.

"The figures for cannabis use among the general population reveal the same pictures. The Netherlands does not differ greatly from other European countries. In contrast, a comparison with the US shows a striking difference in this area: 32.9% of Americans aged 12 and above have experience with cannabis and 5.1% have used in the past month. These figures are twice as high as those 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), pp. 7-8.

"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".

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According to a report in the British Medical Journal in September of 2000, "Cannabis use among Dutch schoolchildren aged 10-18 years has fallen for the first time in 16 years, a national survey of risk behaviour among 10,000 young people has shown."^r The story notes that according to Trimbos, the Netherlands Institute for Mental Health and Addiction, http://www.trimbos.nl/"about one in five young people had used cannabis at some point in their lives but less than a tenth had used it in the previous four weeks ("current users")."