Secondly, for a percentage of people who start off on
soft drugs, it is a gateway into hard drugs.
"Removing the link between
soft drugs, such as cannabis and ecstasy and hard drugs is, to me, an absolute necessity.
In this country,
soft drugs are still illegal but their consumption is de facto tolerated, and treatment-resistant heroin addicts are provided with controlled prescriptions of heroin or maintenance substances (Uchtehagen, 2009).
Soft drugs like cannabis are losing favour with drugs dealers because the packages' bulk make it harder to smuggle packages past customs.
Bob Owens, a former police chief in Oxnard, California, regards
soft drugs such as marijuana "as too unimportant to use manpower" on.
"It has been a matter of great distress and despair for the family seeing this young man from about four years ago taking not just
soft drugs, but heroin.
The Dutch Justice Minister is planning to restrict sale of
soft drugs to Dutch residents and to increase (theoretical) penalties for selling small drugs quantities from one month to one year in prison, according to the rapporteur.
He is said to have started out on
soft drugs then progressed to the harder stuff.
As well as selling small quantities of what the Dutch call '
soft drugs', many coffee shops also comfortable settees, fresh fruit juices and board games.
A spokesperson said: "We want to show the government that an open market for
soft drugs is better than forcing people on to streets where much harder stuff is sold illegally."
He himself was a flagrant homosexual, who strongly promoted "gay" rights, laxer rules on euthanasia, legalized marketing of
soft drugs, and so-called "women's rights."
But he said there needed to be a ``rational debate'' on
soft drugs.