Amsterdam

Just spent a few days in Amsterdam researching scenes for the new Rain book, Requiem for an Assassin. Amsterdam is a beautiful city with a lot to recommend it: historical architecture, charming canals, great public transit. You have to be careful about impressions formed in a single city over the course of 72 hours, but my sense is that there's a strong sense of national identity here. I like the atmosphere. The people are friendly, but there's business in the air -- maybe not the kind of uncut capitalism that supercharges Saigon, but enough to make the Netherlands one of the EU's most thriving economies.

The economic dynamism exists side by side with (or despite? because of?) the country's famously practical approach to drugs and sex. As an American, I find it odd to stroll by women displaying themselves in windows like produce in a supermarket, or to see people doing bong hits in coffeehouses, but the cohesiveness of Dutch society and the strength of the Dutch economy suggest that western civilization won't be doomed if the government gets out of the idiotic business of prohibiting the use of drugs and the sale of sex.

(Did John Rain indulge himself in any of Amsterdam's coffeehouses, you ask? Read Requiem for an Assassin, out on June 26, and find out... ;-))

But Amsterdam holds lessons larger then the desirability of ending prohibition. The very success of the Dutch model -- in contrast with the dramatic failures of America's "War on Drugs" -- makes me wonder why, in the 21st century and with so much evidence to the contrary, America goes on clinging with rigor mortis determination to an obviously failed policy.

Probably part of the answer lies in our Puritan roots. Sex and drugs feel good (then-drug czar -- and nicotine addict -- William Bennett tried to deny it about drugs, but come on, why else do people like them?). Maybe the Puritan underpinnings of our collective unconscious say, "Pleasure... bad! Must prohibit!" Or something like that.

But I think there's something else going on. Sometimes we're not good at separating ends and means, objectives and tactics. When we don't like something and wish we didn't have to deal with it, the means we choose become at least as important as our objectives. We wish people wouldn't use drugs, so we make them illegal. We wish people wouldn't buy and sell sex -- ditto. We wish Castro hadn't come to power -- embargo (can anyone think of other examples? There are a ton, but enumerating them would make for a very long post. But hints: war on terror, AIDS prevention and condoms...). In all these examples, the primary benefit of the chosen policy is to make us feel virtuous, uncorrupted, uncompromising. Meanwhile, the stated objectives of the policies -- eradicating drugs and prostitution, deposing Castro -- go unmet. In fact, the policies achieve perverse side effects, empowering criminals, undermining elected governments in Latin America, and empowering Castro by providing him with an excuse for his own economic failures.

(What was that typically deliciously dry phrase The Economist had about the Castro embargo? "Forty years is a long time for a policy to fail.")

We need to remind ourselves that the policy and its objectives are not the same thing. Then we need to pick realistic objectives (for drugs, I would define the objective as a level of national use low enough to have no material impact on society as a whole). Finally, we need to choose the policies most likely to achieve those objectives, rather than the ones that primarily benefit our narcissistic desire to feel holier than thou.

You don't have to be in favor of drugs, prostitution, or Fidel Castro to want to end prohibition, decriminalize the sale of sex, and end the embargo on Cuba. In fact, your personal feelings on any of these subjects ought not even to be relevant. What matters is the result that's best for society, not the policy that's best for our egos. Holland gets this. Why can't we?