Pragmatism and Licentiousness in Holland

It is not very often that the WSJ Opinion Journal lets me down, but this guy just doesn't get it. The author tries to demonstrate that Amsterdam is not immoral, but merely pragmatic. He fails miserably.

First, he gives us a little background:

Holland has legalized prostitution and euthanasia, and it tolerates the use of soft drugs. The state makes sure that children as young as 12 receive sex education, and contraceptives if they want them.

Yet, the author believes that the Dutch are not immoral:

The modern Dutch consensus is that making outlaws of prostitutes and soft-drug users only pushes them underground and into the hands of real criminals. Better to control and regulate such behaviors by legalizing--or in the case of cannabis, tolerating--the otherwise objectionable. The Dutch word for this is gedogen, which has no equivalent in English yet roughly means permitting what is officially illegal.

The author apparently does not understand that the tolerance and acceptance of immoral actions is in fact a statement of morality. But even he gets confused later:

Practicality is sometimes taken for licentiousness. Yet the Dutch don't offer sex education and contraception at an early age as part of a social experiment to promote or condone teenage sex. They are simply attempting to regulate the inevitable, or at least what's believed to be inevitable.

First he said that the Dutch aren't immoral, they only allow tourists to act immoral, but here he changes his approach and admits that it is inevitable that Dutch teenager will act immorally.

There is one more thing that must be noted:

The Dutch hope that this approach will let authorities focus on fighting serious crimes, such as the forced prostitution of human trafficking, and allow soft-drug users to hang out in places where they aren't so likely to bump into dealers of more dangerous narcotics, like heroin.

I have been to the "cesspool of sin" and my experiences were much different. Outside of every bar and coffee shop that sold legal drugs were three or four of the more dangerous drug dealers; the two worlds have not been separated by the permissive laws. The author is either completely ignorant or intentionally trying to deceive. Of course, he lives in Amsterdam, where sex, drugs, and any other behavior is tolerated. Why would they care about lying?