Frans Koopmans, de Hoop, Netherlands - The Dutch drug policy: Facts and Philosophy Part I
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,
I want to thank the organizers of The 1st World Forum Against Drugs for inviting me to be here and to be able to share with you some facts and ideas about the Dutch Drug Policy.
Introduction
Is the famous Dutch condoning policy on drugs coming to an end? Two years ago, at an international conference on drug addiction in Mexico, our then Minister of Health stated that the present trend of a more restrictive drug policy in the Netherlands would be continued. And he predicted that in about ten years time the Dutch drug policy would not substantially differ from the drug policies of the other countries in Europe. And the present Dutch government has indeed proceeded in this direction. In recent years the Netherlands have sought to shed its ‘anything goes' image and has tightened laws on drugs and prostitution.
I'll give two examples, amongst others, that show this idea of the Netherlands retracing their footsteps and aiming for a less liberal policy.
In May of this year one of the biggest coffee shops in the Netherlands (some would say the biggest of the Netherlands, so of the world...) was closed down - not in Amsterdam as some of you might expect, but in the city of Terneuzen, in the southern part of the country on the border with Belgium. The coffee shop had become too successful.
In this coffee shop, called Checkpoint, nine times as much cannabis was discovered as is officially allowed: more than 4.5 kilo's of so called soft drugs where 500 grams of storage is the maximum. In a warehouse, another 96 kilo's was discovered, at thirteen supply locations another 160 kilo's. Together with another coffee shop, Checkpoint welcomed 2300 to 2900 visitors each day, predominantly from Belgium (40 percent) and France (50 percent). At ‘high times' that could mount to 5000 visitors. If every visitor would by the maximum customer amount of five grams, that would mean the coffee shop should have 25 kilo's in storage. And that is forbidden. In order to be able to comply with the condoning rules, the coffee shop would have to replenish the storage of half a kilo every 30 minutes.
The foreign drug tourists praised the good and constant quality of the netherweed, being sold at the five office windows. Customers had to draw numbers first.
According to the mayor of the city, these numbers can not be reconciled anymore with condoning. "Condoning is only possible when it is limited as to size and time'', he said. According to him, the condoning policy is bankrupt. He therefore made a plea for experiments with governmentally controlled cannabis cultivation.
Second example:
The Dutch government has set up a task force to crack down on marijuana cultivation in the country, the justice ministry said in July of this year. The task force will bring together police, national and local authorities to fight organised crime involved in the production of the drug, the ministry said in a statement, adding that it hopes to significantly reduce it by 2011. "Criminal networks must be tracked down, arrested and dismantled," the ministry said in a statement.
The Netherlands is a tolerant country, some say. Always has been. I'd like to give you a quote:
‘Cornelis is reading to his wife. This chapter of Genesis always moves him. Also his land was once flooded. Tidal waves swallowed the land, but by the will of God the people of Holland conquered it back from the sea; they won it back and created an earthly paradise. Fertile ground, beautiful cities, a peaceful, tolerant land, where the different religions could co-exist, Anabaptists and Catholics, protestants and Jews, the lion lying next to the lamb. How fortunate they are, and how fortunate he is.
It sounds like a modern novel, but it happens to be a quote from a novel dating back to the thirties of the 17th century. An age that indeed showed the Netherlands as a very affluent country. The 17th was the Golden Age, economically, socially and culturally. And already at that time Holland, another name for the Netherlands, was regarded to be tolerant. But was that really so? According to some, tolerance was never much more than a pragmatic way of dealing with things, without much moral considerations. And so, according to the same critics, it has been the way in which the Netherlands have been dealing with drugs.
Dutch Drugs policy
The word that exemplifies most what the drugs policy of the Netherlands is all about, is the word ‘gedogen'. Gedogen', condoning, is in principle not something exclusively Dutch. However, the Netherlands have elevated the principle of condoning to official policy. In the Netherlands, ‘gedogen' is a way of adapting to the changing opinions, especially in the field of sexuality and drug use.
At the national level, the responsibility for the Dutch drug policy is shared by three ministries:
The Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport (VWS) is responsible for coordinating the drug policy, and also carries the main responsibility for the drug prevention and treatment policy.
The Ministry of Justice is charged with enforcement of the law.
The Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations is responsible for matters relating to local government and the police.
At the local level there are ‘tripartite consultations' between the mayor, the police commissioner and the public prosecutor. These three parties jointly shape local drug policy on the basis of their individual responsibilities and powers.
The Netherlands regard its own drug policy as pragmatic, rational, aimed at control. Soft on soft drugs, hard on hard drugs. There is a combination of prevention, care, combating nuisance, tracing and enforcement around the triplet of demand reduction, harm reduction and supply reduction. Public nuisance should be prevented. Every citizen is entitled to fill in one's own life in the way he or she sees fit.
The starting point of the present Dutch drug policy lies in the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s. Things then changed quite dramatically in the Netherlands. The use of cannabis - soft drugs - among young people increased on the waves of the so-called hippie movement. Within this movement, the use of cannabis was a form of dissociating oneself from the predominant materialistic culture. Drug use increased, especially the use of cannabis, LSD and to a certain extent opium.
The views on soft drugs came within a period (1965-1976) where a fundamental moral discussion was being held about the question in how far a government could act as a moralist. These discussions focussed on the question how the right to self-determination of the individual citizen could be shaped in the face of the government. These discussions focussed on subjects as pornography, prostitution, abortion, drugs and euthanasia. The overriding consensus was that morality and criminal justice shouldn't be in each others hair. Victimless offences should be decriminalised. In the beginning of the seventies, the psychic and physical complaints of cannabis use were scarce. So, this strengthened the opinion held by many that the dangers of cannabis should not be exaggerated.
In 1972 heroin was introduced on the Dutch market and thousands were hooked. The condoning policy of the Netherlands was really helped by this large scale selling of cheap heroin in the summer of 1972 and onwards. Heroin use increased. Within a very short time frame the attention of the government was diverted from problems regarding cannabis use to problems surrounding heroin trade. This simultaneous rise of cannabis and heroin consumption has had a very big influence on the change of the Dutch narcotics law of 1976 and the condoning practices afterwards. The threat from the heroin scene was being used as an argument for the decriminalisation of cannabis on the basis of the social stepping stone theory: criminalisation of the cannabis users would lead to further involvement with deviant subcultures and to more excessive use of drugs. One should aim for a separation of the markets of hard and soft drugs. In stead of the moral argument (the government shouldn't be a moralist) the rational argument was played: cannabis and heroin shouldn't be regarded at the same level.
On the basis of some recommendations by formal committees, in 1976, the Narcotics Act (Opium Act of 1919; amended in 1928) was again amended. The Opium Act regulates the production, distribution and consumption of ‘psychoactive' substances. Possession, commercial distribution, production, import and export and advertising the sale or distribution of all drugs has been made punishable by law. Since 1985, this has also covered activities preceding trafficking in hard drugs. The use of drugs is not punishable by law. Activities relating to soft drugs and hard drugs for medicinal and scientific purposes are allowed under the condition that the Minister of Health, Welfare and Sports grants special permission. The government now made a legislative distinction between drugs that involve unacceptable risks, i.e. hard drugs, and drugs that involve acceptable risks, i.e. hemp products.
So, cannabis use and small scale selling were decriminalised. Officially, the possession of soft drugs was - and is - still punishable by law. However, it was no longer characterized as a criminal offence but as a minor offence. The expectation was at that time that the other countries would soon see the wisdom of this. However, this proved to be a miscalculation. Because the other countries did not decriminalise cannabis and the tolerance policy that was intended to be temporarily now became permanent. In 1980 the first coffee shop was set up. The Netherlands did never foresee the commercialisation of the selling of cannabis, how profitable this selling would be and how determining the economic motive would become for the developments in the cannabis market in later years.
Drug aid should focus on minimizing the risks intrinsic to the use of drugs. Methadone programs and syringe exchange programs were part of this concept. Abstinence is not an explicit aim. A distinction is also being made between primary and secondary problems. The underlying assumption of this is the idea that an important part of the drug problems is caused by the illegal status of drugs. Fighting the primary problems causes secondary problems, for instance the criminalisation of the drug user. Aim of the policy now became the reduction of problems, which were caused by the repressive policy that was pursued. This could be achieved by normalizing and culturally integrating the drug problems. This would de-stigmatize users and could make other approaches possible. This Dutch approach, which I have tried to describe in a nutshell, is considered to be pragmatic and realistic. It claims to avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of rigid deterrence on the one side and rigid legalization on the other side.
