Tough Drug Laws Associated with More Drug Use—Lax Laws Associated with Less Drug Use
The Netherlands, with its very permissive marijuana laws, is known as the cannabis capital of the planet. Surprisingly, a survey published this month in PLoS Medicine, a journal of the Public Library of Science, indicates that the Dutch don’t actually experiment with marijuana as much as most people would expect. Despite much tougher drug laws in the U.S., Americans were twice as likely to have tried marijuana than the Dutch, according to the new survey. Americans were more likely to have tried marijuana or cocaine than people in the 16 other countries, including France, Spain, South Africa, Mexico and Colombia, that the survey covered.
Researchers learned that 42% of people surveyed in the U.S. had tried marijuana at least once, and 16% had tried cocaine. Only 20% of people surveyed in the Netherlands, reported having tried marijuana; in Asian countries, such as Japan and China, marijuana use was almost “non-existent,”. New Zealand was the only other country to have the same percentage of pot smokers as the U.S., but no other nation came close to the proportion of Americans who reported trying cocaine.
Why the high percentage of drug takers? Dr. Jim Anthony, chairman of the department of epidemiology at Michigan State University states that U.S. drug consumption has to do with the country’s economic affluence — rich Americans can afford to use their money for recreational drugs. Another possible factor may be an increasing awareness that marijuana may be less toxic than many other drugs, such as tobacco or alcohol. The greater popularity of cocaine may simply be due to the proximity of South America cocaine supplies, the world’s only coca plant suppliers. It’s also a matter of culture: the U.S. is home to the large baby boomer population that grew up when experimenting with drugs was a common.
Experts say the findings of the new survey don’t fairly reflect the success or failure of any particular drug policy. The survey asked only whether people had ever tried drugs in their lifetime — it did not investigate habitual use. For drug policy assessment, you should look at regular use, states Tom Riley, a spokesman for the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy. “Somebody having tried pot in 1968 in college doesn’t really have much to do with what the current drug use picture in the United States is.”
Strict laws don’t appear to affect whether kids will experiment with drugs. One of the questions raised by research of this type is whether Americans will want to continue supporting the incarceration of young people who use small amounts of marijuana, Anthony says. A valid question if 42% of the population has used marijuana during their lives.
The ongoing study, surveyed more than 85,000 people in 17 countries. It is part of a larger project through the World Health Organization’s World Mental Health Survey Initiative. Anthony says further research about the frequency of worldwide drug use, and new data from additional countries will be released in the future.
