In Canada, several Canadians have gone directly to the police and the courts in the last two years to challenge what they say are the country's anachronistic drug laws. Critics of the status quo often look to the Netherlands, and elsewhere in Europe, where drug abuse is viewed primarily as a medical and social problem, rather than a criminal one. Marijuana has never been decriminalized in the Netherlands. It has merely been depenalized through non-enforcement of the law against simple possession. Most Dutch seem content with that state of limbo.
Outright legalization looks to be as far off as ever.
It is not that the bold experiment has failed. Since the country's Opium Act was rewritten 22 years ago, drugs have been divided into two categories, dangerous and less dangerous. That has permitted the coffee shops to flourish, along with outlets for organic stimulants such as peyote and psychedelic mushrooms. Penalties for trafficking in heroin, cocaine and amphetamines, meanwhile, have increased sharply. Hard-drug usage by the Netherlands' 15 million residents is among the lowest in the Western world.