when the experiment began.^[26] This aging cohort means that young recruits are no longer joining the ranks, and the Dutch may have saved themselves from a whole new generation of heroin shooters.

They have also paid a price for this victory with an increase in the use of marijuana, and to American critics, that price is unacceptable.  When the latest Dutch drug statistics were released in 1995, U.S. Representative Gerald Solomon of New York rose in the House to lash out in shock and anger: “Mr. Speaker, the test has been conducted and the results are in from the Netherlands...  From 1988 to 1992, cannabis use among pupils increased 100 percent...”  But the Congressman was avoiding the larger picture. Yes, marijuana use among Dutch teenagers had doubled, but in the U.S. at that moment, despite the most repressive prohibition in history, teenage drug use had also doubled and was still climbing.^[27]  As the Dutch gently observed, “Soft drug use among young people is on the increase in a large number of Western countries, and in some, more strongly than in the Netherlands.”^[28]

But perhaps even more galling for strict prohibitionists like Solomon, was the fact that Dutch tolerance for soft drug users extended to hard drug users as well. In Holland, people holding small amounts of heroin or cocaine for personal use are ignored, and the police themselves are the strongest supporters of this arrangement. “Nobody in my country is happy with the drug problem,” says Bernard Scholten, “but we accept that there are drug users, and then find ways to be realistic.”  Scholten’s office is on the top floor of Police Headquarters in Amsterdam. He’s the department’s official spokesman and he spends much of his time trying to straighten out misinformation being spread by foreign officials. “This is for us a good system. If you compare this soft drug addiction to the alcohol addiction... alcohol addiction is a much bigger problem. We have the figures.”

What about hard drugs?

“We have 8000 registered hard drug users in Amsterdam.  About 400 of this group are the hard core”—