February 25, 1998 Washington, DC U.S. 12th-graders ranked in the lower third among 21 nations in tests measuring their
knowledge of math and science, according to data released Tuesday. Seniors from the Netherlands ranked first in the general mathematics
category, followed by seniors from Sweden, then Denmark. In the general sciences, Swedish
seniors ranked first, followed by those from the Netherlands and Iceland. Prohibitionists like to claim that there have been all manner of dire consequences in
the Netherlands as the result of Dutch marijuana policies. Former Drug Czar Lee Brown has
even said that he has walked through Amsterdam parks where he saw the children stoned out.
(They were probably American and German tourists. He also liked to go around the country
saying that marijuana is sixty times stronger than in the ‘60s.) None of this is true Of course, it would be equally absurd to say that the results of this survey show that
legalizing marijuana causes academic performance to improve. The top ranking countries
have widely varying marijuana policies. However, these results do
prove conclusively that liberalizing marijuana policies have not hurt academic performance
in Holland. Inasmuch as the US rate of teenage marijuana use is at least as high as the Dutch,
there is no reason to think that legalizing marijuana in the US would have an adverse
impact on academic performance. Certainly, "protecting children" cannot be
credibly used as an excuse for suppressing the medical use of marijuana or arresting
adults for using it. One can readily imagine the publicity that the prohibitionists
would give to these numbers if the U.S and Dutch rankings were reversed.