Cannabis Policies and User Practices: Market Separation, Price, Potency, and Accessibility in Amsterdam and San Francisco
Craig Reinarman, "Cannabis Policies and User Practices: Market Separation, Price,
Potency, and Accessibility in Amsterdam and San Francisco," International Journal of Drug Policy, published online ahead of print March 25, 2008.
To get an idea of how drug policies affect marijuana users in the real world, researchers studied marijuana users in two roughly comparable cities with very different policies: San Francisco, where marijuana sales and possession are illegal, and Amsterdam, where regulated sales of small amounts of marijuana constitute a sort of de facto regulated "legalization." While only one in seven Amsterdam residents said they could obtain other drugs from their source of marijuana, half of the San Franciscans said they could do so -- suggesting that the Dutch "tolerance" policy has largely achieved its goal of separating the marijuana market from the hard drug trade.
Free abstract and full text for a fee available at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09553959
