Barb, I also thought that you might find this interesting:
Holland's Half-Baked Drug Experiment
Pubdate: May/June 1999
Source: Foreign Affairs
Copyright: 1999 Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
Volume: 78 No. 3
Mail: Foreign Affairs, 58 East 68th Street, New York, NY 10021
Website:http://www.foreignaffairs.org/
Author: Larry Collins
"Look at the Dutch example!" That phrase has become a kind of mantra, chanted whenever the
advocates of liberalizing drug laws in Europe or the United States gather. The Dutch,
liberalization proponents argue, got it right by legalizing the public sale, under certain restraints,
of cannabis products in their now-famous coffee shops and by adopting a much more lenient
policy toward all forms of drug use and abuse based on a philosophy of "harm reduction."
But did they? It has been almost a quarter-century since the Dutch Parliament set Holland's drug
policy on a course of its own, one markedly different from that of the rest of Europe. Surely 23
years is enough time to examine the consequences of that policy. How has it affected drug use
and addiction in the Netherlands? What impact has it had on Holland's next-door neighbors,
France, Belgium, Germany, and the United Kingdom? Do the results really justify holding the
Dutch drug policy up as a model for other nations to follow? Or are they a warning about the
risks of following the Dutch example?
The revised Dutch drug policy was based on Parliament's 1976 acceptance of the
recommendation of a commission headed by Pieter A. H. Baan, a psychiatrist and expert in
rehabilitating drug addicts who was serving at the time in the Dutch Office of Mental Health. The
Baan Commission's report proposed distinguishing between so-called List One drugs-those that
present "an unacceptable risk (heroin, cocaine and LSD)"--and List Two drugs--cannabis
products, such as hashish and marijuana--seen as less dangerous and "softer." Essentially,
Parliament depenalized the possession of 30 grams of marijuana or hashish--enough, the
legislators calculated, to meet an average smoker's needs for three months. At the same time,
the parliamentarians vowed to continue the fight against both domestic and international
trafficking in the more dangerous List One drugs.
Shortly after accepting the commissions primary recommendation, Parliament went a step
further by authorizing the commercialization of cannabis products through their open sale in a
network of licensed coffee shops. Those shops were subject to a number of legal constraints:
they were not allowed to sell more than 30 grams to a customer; no hard drugs were to be sold
on their premises; and they were neither to advertise, sell to minors, nor operate within 500
meters of a school. Out of respect for Holland's international treaty obligations, the import,
export, production, or sale of cannabis products outside the coffee shops remained illegal.
At the time the Baan Commission report was adopted, Holland had what was considered a
serious heroin addiction problem, albeit one roughly comparable to that of its European
neighbors. The nation was relatively untroubled by major international drug traffickers, with the
exception of a number of Chinese "triads#6663 |
