Maybe they are so stoned with drugs they don't notice the crime anymore.

The U.S. nonviolent prisoner population is larger than the combined populations of Wyoming and Alaska. People arrested for drug crimes in the US account for roughly twenty-five percent of the country’s prison population. Our prisons would be emptying out and some closing also if we decriminalized nonviolent drug possession.

Maybe they could take the rest of our Gitmo detainees.

Marijuana isn't exactly legal in Holland...it was decriminalized in the late 1970s. It's ok to be in possession of a small amount for personal use, and to smoke in "coffee" shops, hotels or at home..but it's not ok to smoke on the street. Because there are no dealers hanging around the streets and railway stations people who smoke dope don't come into contact with heroin..and consequently heroin addiction in the Netherlands has barely risen in the past 20 yrs. By contrast the US rate has risen 1,000% during the same period. The US could learn a lot from the Europeans and become more civilised in the process.

In other news, Netherlands has run out of people and will be shutting down the whole country soon.

JackieDel,
Interesting point about not coming into contact with harder drugs... something to think about.
Although that 1000% number sounds like hyperbole to me.

Billpar, you have got the solution!

http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/0BB20576-CE22-4875-BF1A-A7FFABDCA411/

I don't like numbers just being thrown out there either. I am skeptical about that too. But, it has always been my contention that if you take the crime out, so too goes the criminal. I have been in many a debate on this subject, and a good comparison is the prohibition era of gangsters and payoffs all through the entire system. When alcohol was reinstated as legal most of that moved on to make monies in the drug trade which has taken the heat ever since. History does repeat.Unfortunately the following generations can't see that far, in either direction.