First, it is not necessarily a bad thing for cannabis use to increase. Countries with the highest usage rates include some of the most prosperous in the world – Canada, Australia and New Zealand for example.  Secondly, even if increased cannabis use is a bad thing, there is little evidence to prove usage would necessarily go up if cannabis were legalized. Usage may have risen slightly in the Netherlands but cannabis was depenalized in 1976 and usage rates remain lower than in the US today. Moreover, there are other reasons why usage rose. According to Dirk Korf of the Institute of Criminology at the University of Amsterdam, "There is no appreciable causal connection between the Dutch decriminalization of cannabis and the rate at which cannabis use has evolved" 1.Portugal decriminalized drug use in 2001 and, a decade later, drug usage and drug related crime rates have fallen and cannabis use remains below the European average2 .  1. Griffin, 2011,   2. Hari, 2009,