Leaving Amsterdam

I'm currently in Amsterdam Centraal Station. My first high-speed train trip in Europe starts in about half an hour. I'll be in Paris for the next 5 nights or so.

Amsterdam was a fun glimpse into a more liberal world. Just to visit this place is to see the insanity of the drugs policy in the US and elsewhere. The smell of pot is everywhere in the tourist areas of Amsterdam - drifting out of the "coffeeshops" and hostel lobbies. But there aren't legions of crazy people wandering the streets. Violence and crime both seemed low. There are plenty of people on the streets wanting to sell tourists baking soda or sugar, but little in the way of actual hard drugs. The ubiquity of pot has not led to a single negative consequence that I can see.

The kicker is that pot is ubiquitous only in the tourist areas of Amsterdam. In The Netherlands as a whole, use is low. Over twice as many people per capita use pot in the US than in the Netherlands.

Meanwhile, the US has spent some 19 billion dollars at the state and federal level so far this year on the war on drugs. It's hard to tell exactly how much of this was spent targeting cannabis, but given that nearly 300,000 people have been arrested for cannabis offences so far this year (> 40% of all arrests) you'd assume it's a lot. "Crazy" is the only word for this.

I didn't smoke any pot in Amsterdam myself, although at times I suspected I was getting a little stoned via passive smoking.

Anyway enough ranting. I have one more photo from Amsterdam which I think neatly sums up the way the Dutch deal with social problems, but it'll have to wait till I get back on my laptop. Right now I have a train to catch.