[mbrock]

"I know plenty of dutch people (in the thousands) but know only very few that are substance abusers."

What do you mean by substance abuse? And, how much do you really know about the drug habits of your thousands of acquaintances?

[jacquesm]

Live around Amsterdam long enough and you too will become an expert at spotting junkies. As for the habits of my thousands of acquitances because use is legal people are pretty open about it here if they use soft drugs.

The few people that I know that are into harder drugs would not advertise that too openly but if there were no downsides to hard drug abuse that you can spot relatively easily if the consumption lasts for longer than a trial period then I don't think we'd have hard drug legislation to begin with.

In America for instance people would be a lots more circumspect about their drug use (but those barriers evaporate as soon as they set foot on Dutch soil and it is party time).

[mbrock]

It didn't seem like you were talking about "junkies" when you brought up substance abuse in the context of a tourist eating mushrooms and visiting a museum. And you say that many university students engage in substance abuse; that also makes me wonder about your definition of the term, because in my experience, while university life involves quite a lot of alcohol, I haven't heard of that many students whom I would consider "substance abusers."

[jacquesm]

Substance abuse to me is defined as consuming any drug to such a level that it interferes with your normal life.

Tourists visiting cities simply because of the novelty factor of drugs being legal and then partaking in this out of curiosity are simply stupid, not addicts (they are stupid because they are not in any way positioned to know what they are buying and this results in quite a few trips to the ER each year).

But drug addiction does exist and the number of foreigners that end up in Dutch rehab programs and or shelters is huge.

It's even got a name here: drugs tourism.

Alcohol can be abused just like any other drug (and in fact, is probably the most commonly abused drug).

[mbrock]

Hm, what do you mean they aren't positioned to know what they're buying? In general?

If someone is curious about psychedelic drugs, and they visit Amsterdam because they are decriminalized there, they are therefore stupid?

I can't really imagine that's what you mean, though that's what you wrote.

[jacquesm]

They are stupid because they don't have a supplier that they can trust nor do they have the information to distinguish the 'real' stuff from stuff that will make them simply ill or even (rare, fortunately) kill them.

The fact that it is decriminalized does not mean that people won't be trying to take advantage of you.

Buying drugs is not quite buying a bottle of Sprite, it typically does not come in a container with a brand name on it and as a tourist you won't be hanging around long enough to work out which connections you can trust and which to stay away from. The person selling it to you just wants your money, once. For a repeat buyer the risks would go down considerably.

Feel free to ignore any and all of the above. We're off-topic far enough as far as I'm concerned, if you feel that buying drugs abroad in one-off cash transactions does not carry significant risk then I'm perfectly ok with that.

[mbrock]

Is there a significant risk of being sold poisonous mushrooms in an Amsterdam smartshop? Or are you talking about other drugs?

(By the way, many products sold in such stores do in fact come in branded containers including instruction booklets for safe usage, etc.)