In Amsterdam, a huge number of coffee shops, where all comers are invited menu with a list of marijuana and hashish: Thai, Afghan, Colombian, Jamaican, and more. etc. But there are limitations: in coffee shops allowed to sell alcohol and hard drugs, as well as to sell in one hand for more than five grams. Today in the Netherlands with a population of 15 million 1200 seats open sale hemp drugs. The novelty of the Netherlands legislation on drugs discovered in the late seventies years, when authorities held the line between drugs "heavy" and "light." The latter carried the substance of cannabis. Critics accuse the Dutch of the increasing number of people, especially young people, smoking marijuana, and point out weaknesses drugs as a step transition to a highly potent. The Dutch has its reasons: marijuana smokers suffer from physiological effects (increased heart rate, increased heart rate, impaired motor functions, reduction in psychomotor activity, etc.), but physical dependence on cannabis are rare, smokers do not find stable abstinence syndrome. United States, unlike the Netherlands, a country where for any narcotics use "policy of zero tolerance." Nevertheless, in New York, there are several clinics for the treatment of opiate dependence methadone.
This drug is banned in Russia, several countries in Asia and Africa. In Moscow and other cities of methadone can be bought "on the black market." For many it is just a new synthetic opiate, promising nearly the same feelings as other substances. American drug experts, most of them, the 60-ies. insist on the benefits of methadone as a weaker drugs that can ward off the plague from a strong addiction to opiate substance. He is weaker than heroin, prevents withdrawal symptoms, while at the same time removes the craving for hard drugs, etc. Nazaraliyev "Deliver and forgive", Chapter 7, p. 158-159 / Disputes to legalize soft drugs are still in both the U.S. and in Russia. But to reach a consensus very difficult. Too many arguments against it. Therefore, difficult to predict, as a society, the government of a State will treat this issue in a couple of decades.