Our municipality of Maastricht recently received some international “recognition” for its crackdown of drug tourism and the strict enforcement of the Dutch marijuana laws. [1] Malcolm Gladwell, in David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Batting Giants, makes references to the inverted-U curve and how “we are operating in a U-shaped world”. [2]  This blog piece – which includes a small chunk from my draft PhD thesis (expected finish date: sometime in this century) – will attempt to intertwine these two seemingly unrelated topics (at least initially) to pose the question, do politicians (lawmakers) know what they are doing?

The Inverted-U Curve

Before we address this question, a definition of the inverted-U curve is in order. Psychologists Barry Schwartz and Adam Grant – whom Gladwell cites – claim that great many things of any consequence obey the inverted-U curve: “Across many domains of psychology, one finds that X increases Y to a point, and then it decreases Y… There is no such thing as an unmitigated good. All positive traits, states, and experiences have costs that at high levels may begin to outweigh their benefits.” [3]

The concept of the inverted-U is closely related to the economic law of diminishing marginal utility and in the legal context, it can be illustrated by the following example: If laws (x) are introduced to a state of complete anarchy, some sense of order (y) may be restored so long as the laws are efficiently enforced. By collecting taxes from the people and enhancing these enforcement measures, the anarchy could transition into some form of governance, which adheres to the principle of social contract. When the enforcement becomes excessive (and people are forced to pay more and more taxes as a result), the top of the inverted-U has been reached and additional enforcements thereafter could be more detrimental to maintaining that sense of order that the law had brought about initially. This could potentially lead to disobedience of authority, a revolution and possibly a return to the initial state of anarchy. Up and down, all in accordance to the inverted-U curve.

Coffee Shops & Drug Dealers 

Although the Dutch central government creates policies and laws related to the sales of marijuana, it is ultimately up to the municipalities (like Maastricht or Amsterdam) to enforce them, which explains why the enforcement is a lot more lenient in Amsterdam and why it is so “draconian” in Maastricht. For example, Maastricht has gone above and beyond its call to weed out foreign drug tourism by mandating “weed passes”, which require those seeking to purchase marijuana legally to show proof of residency at the city hall, before they are allowed to purchase marijuana from Maastricht’s 14 coffee shops. Maastricht’s crackdown of its marijuana laws has led to 1) protests and store closings by the local coffee shops (where marijuana was being sold legally); 2) a steep increase in the number of illegal drug peddlers on the street as a result thereof; and 3) a rise in crimes committed by such drug dealers. One Maastricht resident who was interviewed by the Huffington Post article (see footnote 1) is quoted as saying that while drug tourism was indeed a problem, the excessive crackdown has led to a proliferation of illegal drug dealers and an influx of harder drugs such as heroin and cocaine that they are now peddling. It is simple supply and demand I suppose: So long as the demand is there, the supply will find a way to meet that demand, one way (legal) or the other (illegal).

So let us ask the following question in closing: Is the inverted-U curve at work here? Has the enforcement of marijuana laws in Maastricht (x), gone over the top of the inverted-U to a point where the more the municipality cracks down, less good and order (y) it leads to? After all, according to Schwartz and Grant, there is no such thing as an unmitigated good and why should the law and its enforcement be exempt from this seemingly universal rule? This blog piece does not advocate for any particular conclusion, nor does it make a stand on what the appropriate marijuana law or its enforcement ought to be. I am not qualified to do so nor does it affect my life (except for that one time when a crazy drugged man stomped up and down on the hood of our car, while shouting obscenities in the middle of the night, but that is neither here nor there). My only question, though admittedly rhetorical is, do lawmakers and politicians ever take into consideration the phenomenon of the inverted-U curve and ever stop to think about whether their policies, however well-intentioned, could be doing more harm than good? This question should be asked, not just in the context of marijuana laws, but with regards to more important matters such as enforcements of immigration policies, labor law compliances and financial regulations (to list only a few).

[1]        M. Corder, “Dutch Marijuana Laws Rollback Provides Lessons for Legalization in US States”, (7 March 2014). Available at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/07/dutch-marijuana-laws-us-states_n_4918305.html (last accessed 9 March 2014).

[2]        M. Gladwell, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, (London; Little Brown & Company, 2013), at p. 52.

[3]        B. Schwartz & A. Grant, “Too Much of a Good Thing: The Challenges and Opportunity of the Inverted U”, Perspectives on Psychological Science 6(1), (2011): 61-76.