John Tierney wrote his Saturday New York Times column from Amsterdam, where he found that contrary to what U.S. drug warriors would have us believe, lenient Dutch drug policy hasn’t wrought the end of Dutch society.

I do think, however, that libertarians should hesitate before citing the Dutch as a model. Last year, I attended a forum at the Dutch embassy on drug policy in the Netherlands. I was underwhelmed.

The Dutch treat drug use a little like the way the public health crazies in this country would like to treat obesity. That means there is freedom to ingest some illicit drugs, but with massive government intervention, oversight, and a panoply of PR campaigns and state-funded treatment, and very little in the way of holding users responsible for using drugs, well, responsibly.

At the forum I attended, Dutch officials were quick to correct any misunderstanding Americans might have that Dutch citizens are actually given any real freedom over what they put into their bodies. The Dutch government, they assured us, loathes and despises marijuana every bit as much as the American government. They just prefered to steer the Dutch people away from it with propaganda and heavy regulation.

That’s certainly a step up from no-knock raids, mandatory minimums, and confidential informants. But it’s still a far cry from a government that treats its citizens as adults capable of making their own decisions about intoxicants.