when governments on both sides of the Atlantic were suddenly confronted with a generation of dope-smoking hippies and anti-war protestors. The global alarm over the clouds of marijuana smoke inspired high level investigations throughout the Free World. In the U.S., Richard Nixon created the Shafer Commission, the Dutch assembled a group of experts called the Baan Working Party, the U.K. formed a prestigious committee under Baroness Wootten, and in Toronto, law school dean Gerald Le Dain headed the Canadian Government’s Commission of Inquiry.^[24] While the U.S. group was front-loaded with conservative politicians who were expected to come down heavily against the Devil Weed, their conclusions surprisingly mirrored those of the more scientifically rounded commissions.  All four groups found marijuana roughly as intoxicating and dangerous as alcohol, and the English report went a step further: “The evidence of a link with violent crime is far stronger with alcohol than with the smoking of cannabis.”^[25]

Without exception, these four disparate committees, which included some of the leading legal, medical and scientific specialists of the Western World, recommended that laws against marijuana be relaxed. President Nixon dealt with this unwelcome news by sweeping it under the rug, and the Canadian government followed suit. But in Holland, where scientists and engineers are taken seriously, they simply followed the recommendations. The Baan group, like the other commissions, noted the significant difference between marijuana and the other drugs on the dealer’s shelf.  And since they recognized the ritual duty of young people to flirt with danger, the Dutch thought it would be better for the ones who chose to experiment with drugs to experiment with reefer rather than smack.  The plan was to erect a wall between the so-called soft drugs—marijuana and hashish—and hard drugs like heroin and cocaine.  This meant they would have to set up a quasi-legal distribution system, because if students had to buy their grass from criminals, they would be exposed to every other conceivable option as well.