Drug Bizarro In Sweden
Digs Himself In Deeper With Specific Lies About the Dutch;
Says Their Murder Rate Is Twice DEAland’s, But It Is Just 20% Of Ours!
(Ed. note: This is just a breath-taking
performance! It is understandable that the Drug Czar would start his trip in Sweden, whose
"drugs" policies are even more driven by ideology than DEAland’s, but he
should not be drawing attention to the Netherlands, especially not with specific
quantifiable lies. Now he will go on to Holland with both feet in his mouth and be greeted
by the facts. Is he a pathological liar, or simply incompetent? Well, I guess he could be
both. Will Reuters report the facts or just parrot the lies, as they do here?) See
Associated Press
Reports On Dutch Ambassador’s Protests On Drug Bizarro’s Remarks Prior To His
Trip To Holland
and
Exchange Between
Mike Gray and the Drug Bizarro On CNN Talkback Live: Gray Warns That Dutch Will Protest
and
Go Dutch!
July 13, 1998
From Reuters
By Abigail Schmelz
US DRUG CZAR BASHES DUTCH POLICY ON EVE OF VISIT
STOCKHOLM, July 13 (Reuters) - A top U.S. policy official attacked tolerant Dutch drugs
laws on Monday, blaming them for much higher rates of murder and other crime than in the
United States.
"The murder rate in Holland is double that in the United
States. The per capita crime rates are much higher than the United States,"
General Barry McCaffrey, the White House drugs policy chief, told a press briefing in
Stockholm.
McCaffrey said the United States had 8.22 murders per 100,000
people in 1995 compared to 17.58 in The Netherlands. Overall per capita crime rates in the
United States totalled 5,278 per 100,000 compared to 7,928 in the Netherlands, he said.
(Ed. note: Oops! The actual Dutch murder rate is approximately 1.3 per 100,000, or less
than 20% of the US rate. In 1995 there were 193 murders in the Netherlands, which has a
population of approximately 15,000,000.
From The Netherlands Central Bureau Of Statistics
Key figures Statistics Netherlands / Health and welfare
http://www.cbs.nl/eng/kfig/kgw0625z.htm
Last update: Feb 06, 1998
Mortality by major causes of death
Year: 1980 1990 1994 1995
Homicide and injury purposely inflicted by others: 111 135
171 193
For years, the Dutch lumped what we call "attempted murder" in with actual
murders. Inasmuch as modern medicine in advanced countries saves most victims of
potentially deadly force, this greatly distorted the numbers. Perhaps this was the source
of the Drug Czar’s numbers.
If so they can be traced back to Dr. Herbert Kleber at Joe Califano’s CASA. Kleber
used these same numbers even after the error in the comparison was pointed out to him.
For a lengthy critique of Califano’s attack on the Dutch
, see The Case of Califano vs The Netherlands by NORML Board of Directors
member, Dr. Craig Reinarman, from the International Journal of Drug Policy, which is
online at the University of Amsterdam Center for Drugs Research site at http://www.frw.uva.nl/cedro/library/craig/califano.html#note01
)
"The overall crime rate in Holland is probably 40 percent higher than the United
States. That’s drugs
," McCaffrey said.
(Ed. note: Well, if "that’s drugs," then is the
much lower Dutch homicide rate the result of their drugs policies? Actually, there are
many factors other than "drugs" which determine a country’s crime rate and
make comparisons with other countries misleading. Some are as obvious as the lumping of
murder with attempted murder. Others are much more complex. Crime in the US is almost
certainly much more underreported than in Holland. Why? Holland is a small country with
more centralized data gathering. If the Drug Czar had my enormous budget and huge staff,
he would not have made this error.
In the US many victims – especially minorities – do not even bother to report
crimes, because they either distrust the police, or conclude that it would not do any
good. When crimes are reported to local police, they are not always reported upward to
Washington. The one crime that is almost always reported in murder, but in the US many
thousands of people simply disappear every year without a trace. Were they murdered, or
did they simply do the American thing and "head West?")
McCaffrey was in Sweden as part of a seven-country European tour which will include the
Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland. While Dutch crime rates were
on the rise, those in the United States were falling, he said.
(Ed. note: The decline in US crime is driven by both
demographics, a decline in the number of young males, and especially by a decline in the
crack business. Holland never had a crack epidemic from which to recover.)
He said U.S. drug-related murders were down by one-third and crime rates had fallen
sharply because of a reduction in drug abuse rates, especially of cocaine and stimulants.
(Ed. note: Alright, but marijuana use has supposedly been going up,
and the principle difference in US and Dutch drugs policies is the separation of marijuana
and hard drugs.)
See
Comparison of drug addiction
levels in various European countries.
McCaffrey said the Swiss addiction rate was much higher than that of the United States
or anywhere else in Europe.
"Why is it they’re happy about what they’re doing? I’ll go and try to
listen to why they think they should go this route and what evidence they have that
it’s working."
He praised Sweden’s policy, where no differentiation is
made between softer drugs, such as marijuana, and cocaine and heroin.
Similarly, the French government last month rejected mounting calls to decriminalise
soft drugs following an official report which concluded drinking was far more of a
health hazard than smoking cannabis.
(Ed. note: It is interesting that Reuters refers to the
French study.)
See
More Details From
French Report Saying Alcohol Is Much More Dangerous Than Cannabis Reported By IoS
"We’ve found we have a lot in common," Swedish Health and Social Affairs
Minister Margot Wallstrom told Reuters.
"We have a brave goal—a goal of a drug-free society. We’re
eager to see arguments towards drug legalisation stopped within the European Union,"
she said after meeting McCaffrey.
See
Swedish Newspaper
Says Their Policies Give Better Protection Against "hell of drug abuse than loose
rules" of Dutch
In Sweden, where the government keeps a tight rein on alcohol and sales are only
allowed through a state-run monopoly, both possesion and use of drugs are illegal. Alcohol
is heavily taxed and blamed for many of the country’s social ills.
The Netherlands, a front runner in drugs tolerance, recently started giving free heroin
to hard-core addicts through a health ministry project in a pilot programme.
Dutch officials said its programme differed from a similar one in
Switzerland to give heroin to addicts because the Dutch scheme involved people under
medical supervision.
McCaffrey said Amsterdam was probably Europe’s chief drug market and was now
exporting synthetic drugs such as Ecstasy to Britain and the United States.
(Ed. note: This is prohibited by Dutch law, and the Dutch vigorously
enforce these laws and cooperate fully with other countries. This has nothing to do with
Dutch cannabis polices or its treatment of hard drug addicts.)
The government of the Netherlands has already rebuked McCaffrey for comments on a U.S.
television show where he called Dutch policy a "disaster." It said this was
unhelpful and called into question the source of the facts and figures he was quoting.
"I must say that I find the timing of your remarks, six days before your planned
visit to the Netherlands with a view to gaining first-hand knowledge about Dutch drugs
policy and its results, rather astonishing," Joris Vos, Dutch ambassador to the
United States, said in a letter to McCaffrey.
U.S. officials made a copy of the letter available to reporters.
Supported