Say what you will about prohibitionists — and I say plenty — but, if nothing else, they are consistent. Regardless of the circumstances, they stick to their talking points — no matter how instantly refutable their claims may be.

Case in point. CBS News online today ran part one of an ongoing debate between recently retired Orange County, California Judge Jim Gray (who many of you recently watched testify before the California Assembly Committee on Public Safety here) and prohibitionist profiteer David Evans (who was last heard lying about medical marijuana law reform in New Jersey in a debate with NORML’s Chris Goldstein, which may be heard here).

Predictably, early in the CBS News debate Evans cites the Netherlands’ pot policies — which allow for the regulated sale of small amounts of cannabis to citizens age 18 an older — as an argument in favor of maintaining U.S.-style marijuana prohibition. According to Evans, Dutch marijuana use “more than doubled” after liberalization, leading the government to “formally announce its mistake” in 2004.

Hmmm, I guess Mr. Evans must have purposely avoided reading the newspaper last week or else he would have seen this widely disseminated report from Reuters Wire Service, published on Friday.

Dutch among lowest cannabis users in Europe — report
via Reuters

The Dutch are among the lowest users of marijuana or cannabis in Europe despite the Netherlands’ well-known tolerance of the drug, according to a regional study published on Thursday. Among adults in the Netherlands, 5.4 percent used cannabis, compared with the European average of 6.8 percent, according to an annual report by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, using latest available figures.

… The policy on soft drugs in the Netherlands, one of the most liberal in Europe, allows for the sale of marijuana at “coffee shops”, which the Dutch have allowed to operate for decades, and possession of less than 5 grams (0.18 oz).

Not surprisingly, Evans also failed to cite a World Health Organization report, published last year, which reported:

US leads the world in illegal drug use
via CBS News

Despite tough anti-drug laws, a new survey shows the U.S. has the highest level of illegal drug use in the world.

The World Health Organization’s survey of legal and illegal drug use in 17 countries, including the Netherlands and other countries with less stringent drug laws, shows Americans report the highest level of cocaine and marijuana use.

For example, Americans were four times more likely to report using cocaine in their lifetime than the next closest country, New Zealand (16% vs. 4%). Marijuana use was more widely reported worldwide, and the U.S. also had the highest rate of use at 42.4% compared with 41.9% of New Zealanders.

In contrast, in the Netherlands, which has more liberal drug policies than the U.S., only 1.9% of people reported cocaine use and 19.8% reported marijuana use.

The WHO report went on to conclude: “The Netherlands, with a less criminally punitive approach to cannabis use than the U.S., has experienced lower levels of use, particularly among younger adults. Clearly, by itself, a punitive policy towards possession and use accounts for limited variation in national rates of illegal drug use.”

But Mr. Evans isn’t content to just simply lie about the Dutch. Elsewhere in the debate he falsely implies that the U.K. also experienced a spike in marijuana use after the British government temporarily downgraded its cannabis classification in 2004. (Parliament ended its experiment with decriminalization in 2008, a move that Evans argues was because of “the more lethal quality of the cannabis now available.”) The truth, however, was just the opposite.

Fewer young people using cannabis after reclassification
via The Guardian

Cannabis use among young people has fallen significantly since its controversial reclassification in 2004, according to the latest British Crime Survey figures published today.

The Home Office figures showed the proportion of 16 to 24-year-olds who had used cannabis in the past year fell from 25% when the change in the law was introduced to 21% in 2006/07.

As for anyone who thinks they can stomach reading Mr. Evans lies in part two of the debate, be sure to log on here tomorrow.

The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) is beginning the New Year by coordinating the nomination of the Netherlands for a Nobel Prize for its achievements in minimizing drug use in its citizens, while at the same time restricting imprisonment.

With few peers at the international level and despite tremendous pressure from the United States, the Dutch government and its people have proven for more than 30 years that it is more cost effective, humane, and practical to be “smart on drugs” rather than “tough on drugs.”

The following quotes from physician Stephen H. Frye’s book ‘Twenty-five Reasons to Legalize Drugs – We Really Lost This War!’ document the validity and appropriateness of this nomination:

“The drug war, not the drugs, kills people.

This is now a real war. Although it started out as political rhetoric, it’s become a genuinely deadly conflict…It has caused hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths and untold misery, especially to our children, teens, women, and minorities. And like all wars, it’s been hugely expensive and wasteful; to date, it has cost more than a trillion dollars. And this is just in the United States; the international devastation is incomprehensible. Furthermore, like many wars, it’s based on lies.

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“Coffee Shops Will Disappear Within Two Years…The Netherlands Can’t Continue To Tolerate Existence of Coffee Shops Because Of International Opposition.”
-Henk van de Bunt, Professor of Criminology at Erasmus University (Radio Netherlands, Nov. 10, 2008)

In the last few weeks, NORML has received numerous inquiries from international and American media, and concerned NORML members, regarding the current and future legal status of The Netherlands’ tolerant and pragmatic cannabis policies. Recent news headlines have concentrated on minority Dutch parties and academics (many of whom have historically opposed the ‘coffee shop’ model) that have been able to persuade coalition government parties (who favor cannabis tolerance) in making two small concessions on where cannabis-selling cafes can be located in the country:

*43 of 228 cannabis-selling cafes in the city of Amsterdam will have to close by the end of 2011 because they are located less than 275 yards from a secondary school. One of the unfortunate victims of this political and zoning concession is the famous Bulldog Café on the Leidseplein.

*In the border city of Maastricht, in an effort to assuage neighboring countries, the city council has voted to remove coffee shops from the center city area (however, allowing them in the suburbs and neighborhoods).

According to the ministry of justice ‘coffee shops’ in The Netherlands where cannabis is sold fell from 729 in 2005 to 702 in 2007.

Dutch drug policy expert Peter Cohen tells NORML that the efforts of the anti-cannabis Christian Democratics “maybe no more than a prelude to some sort of regulation of cannabis production for recreational use. Every one is ready for it.”

A few days after these minor changes in Dutch cannabis were announced, a cannabis policy summit was convened by the influential Association of Dutch Municipalities in Almere where announcements were made that seem to affirm the Dutch’s fondness for their hundreds of cannabis-selling cafes:

1) Surveys of Dutch mayors from Binneblands and NRC newspaper were released indicating strong support for cannabis-selling cafes: 54 of 88 mayors favor legalizing cannabis sales, including the mayors of Amsterdam, Maastricht, Haarlem and Hilversum. Another 25 said they are satisfied with the current system of tolerated sales and 9 favor banning cannabis-selling cafes.

2) A result of convening the November 21 ‘cannabis summit’ in Almere was that instead of a narrowing the Dutch cannabis policies, representatives of more than 30 city governments seeking a path towards genuinely legal sales of cannabis agreed to create a municipally owned cannabis cultivation and processing center in the city of Eindhoven.

In an interview in the November 21st Volkskrant Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen makes it clear that the closing (or likely re-location) of the 43 cannabis-selling cafes in Amsterdam slated for 2011 is happening because of pressure from the national government, not his own judgment, “ We have cast iron arguments…a total ban on coffee shops really will not reduce the use of drugs.”

‘The Mafia In The United States Was Founded Thanks To Prohibition’
-Christian Democrat mayor of Maastricht

The ‘maverick’ Christian Democrat mayor of Maastricht, like his counterpart Mayor Cohen in Amsterdam, favors regulated coffee shops and compromise now with the national government with an eye to future regulations and controls for cannabis-selling cafes. Mayor Cohen went on to tell the cannabis summit in Almere that legalization of cannabis production and sales makes it easier for government to control and reduce the involvement of organized crime.

Volkskrant estimates that 25% of tourists coming to Amsterdam visit cannabis-selling cafés, and Mayor Cohen points out that cannabis tourists cause much less of a nuisance than foreigners who drink alcohol.

What is the uptake of all of this?

-Cannabis has been for almost 30 years, is now, and will continue to be legally sold in the Netherlands at hundreds of cannabis-selling cafes to adults over 18 years of age;

-The 43 cannabis-selling cafes scheduled to close (or re-locate) in 2011 are part of citywide effort to gentrify parts of Amsterdam’s ‘Old City’ that are prime for urban and tourist redevelopment;

-Cannabis tourists from Germany and Belgium can no longer readily purchase cannabis at nearby cross border cannabis-selling cafes or in the center of Maastricht;

-The Dutch still have the best, most effective and humane cannabis policy in the world.

Let’s hope for sanity’s sake that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is not as bonkers as so many editors and producers are today in the United Kingdom regarding the issue of cannabis. After foreshadowing his intent last week to re-classify cannabis to fetch a harsher penalty and direct police to make more arrests, Mr. Brown will apparently face a much anticipated advisory report from the highly respected, and rarely unobserved, Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) that, like virtually every major government report or commission review, advises for more, not less tolerance and punitive measures for cannabis consumers.

Will Brown kowtow to this current (and really bizarre) epoch of British media Reefer Madness or respect the ACDM’s logical and pragmatic recommendation not to increase the penalties for cannabis? Why does the British Home Office (and apparently the opposition Tory leader David Cameron as well) continue to pretend The Netherlands–and their ongoing, 35-year positive experience with controlled cannabis sales–does not occur just 95 miles away?

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