References to the drug control experiences of Britain (medical prescription of heroin) and the Netherlands (the regulated sale of marijuana by coffeeshops) have long been a commonplace of the American drug policy debate. The Zurich Platzspitz (“Needle Park”) experience and the recent Swiss heroin maintenance trials have entered that debate more recently (e.g., Nadelmann, 1998). In the United States, descriptions of these policies and assessments of their effectiveness fall somewhere between casual and negligent. For example, a common claim is that the British made heroin legally available before 1967. In support of legalization, some then cite the low number of heroin addicts during most of that period; their critics then cite the large percentage increase in addicts when a few doctors began prescribing recklessly. In fact, the pre-1967 regime was not legalization, and not, in legal terms, very different from what replaced it; the growth that led to the 1967 change involved in absolute terms only a few hundred heroin users. Britain's major heroin epidemic occurred much later and – as discussed below – was not unlike that experienced in other industrialized nations (see Johnson, 1975; Pearson, 1991, 1992; Strang, 1989).

Nevertheless, Western European nations have indeed adopted a wide variety of policies toward controlling illicit drugs. This variation makes the study of Western European experiences so interesting for those concerned with U.S. drug policy, particularly for those calling for a major retreat from the “war on drugs.”