Why Ban Drugs? Part IV: The Dutch
The Netherlands tends to consider itself a “pragmatic” country, especially regarding its policy on drugs[1]. Yet as the following chapter indicates, the dramatic shift which established its policy regime was driven more by ideology than evidence, and justified more by identity than by a consideration of externalities. The policy regime is a flagship example for Harm Reduction models across Europe, and has, in line with the theories and norms expounded in the Hulsman Commission report of 1971, treated drug abuse as public health issue and a matter of personal choice, to the point of considering the destruction of oneself and family through drug abuse a human right:
"If an individual makes a choice that may be dangerous to herself as a private person (e.g. someone refuses blood transfusions) no one should deny her this right. Even when such behavior might endanger others (e.g. parents who do not allow their children to be vaccinated even if a danger for infection exists) the right of a personal choice will not be denied" [2].
While pressure to change direction came from neighbouring states in the 1990s, the basic program is strongly tied to a sense of national identity and fundamental values, and is “not up for discussion”[3]. Rather than being purely practical, the Dutch administration has abused their reputation for pragmatism to turn a whim into a principle. Today, the normalisation of drug consumption has taken on a Brave New World dystopian quality. Popular news shows paint ecstasy as a harmless pleasure, and cheerful youth programs promote "safe" drug use through fun, excited and lighthearted infotainment programmes. The Netherlands has become a continental hub for trafficking, and produces enough synthetic drugs to create a serious environmental hazard. But while this hedonism and abandon is certainly conspicuous and unhealthy, it is not entirely new.
If You Can't Beat Them...
From the mid-nineteenth century until just before the First World War, the West had a drug problem. In the Netherlands, as elsewhere, none of the most dangerous substances (opiates, cocaine) were regulated, and their abuse was widespread and popular[4]. The global trade in and manufacture of opium and cocaine was a major source of state revenue until 1940[5]. Following pressure from the United States, who accused them of undermining regulations, the Dutch hosted an international conference on the regulation of narcotics in the Hague in 1912[6], but were reluctant to ratify it, and continued resisting international pressure and engaging in selective, and often unwilling[7] enforcement: much like today, the 1919 opium law superficially forbade transport and trade, but practically allowed it through a permit system. Police authorities struggled to contain the port trade in narcotics, and relied on American coordination and support[8]. This once more echoes the modern Netherlands, where public officials are repeatedly tied to drug supply and manufacture networks, and the scale of the industry has escaped police capacity to manage it[9]
The end of the Second World War saw cannabis consumption introduced by American soldiers (another recurring consequence of American occupation – increased use of cannabis). The breakdown of colonial control during this time saw growing Surinamese cannabis imports, and an emerging subculture started consuming the drug[10]. This was responded to by adding the drug to the Opium Law register in 1953, and in 1955 police were for the first time encourage to enforce laws against possession, a policy which expanded to include LSD and other psychedelics in 1965 after conservative newspapers publicised (and to an extent dramatised) the risks[11]. Until this point, public awareness of substance abuse beyond alcohol was essentially nonexistent[12].
Much of the normalisation of drugs during this period was driven by the Marcusans[13] and anarchists[14] of the “Provo” (as in to provoke) and Kabouter movements, who strongly promoted anything illegal or antiauthoritarian, and were admired as daring by many young people. Their successful, mostly nonviolent attempts to provoke overreactions from the authorities over public drug consumption undermined confidence in the police, and the election of several members to the Amsterdam city council made it clear that prohibition would be a challenge[15]. These and other groups, as well as shifts in youth and elite opinion led to a fundamental change in perspective on the state’s role as enforcer of morality on all issues from abortion to sex education[16].
The Ministry for Magical Thinking
The formal decriminalisation of narcotics in the Netherlands was fundamentally shaped by the Hulsman Commission, headed by law professor Louk Hulsman, a prison abolitionist[17], and antinomianist[18], and the Baan Commission, headed by Pieter Baan, a prominent psychiatrist. The two commissions on drug consumption in the Netherlands commissioned at this time, while ostensibly independent, in fact contained many of the same members, and habitually leaked their intended findings at regular intervals leading up to their release[19]. This, as well as the aforementioned radical politics, may have contributed to the emergence of selective enforcement before the report was even published, which was observed at the Holland Pop festival in 1970, and several areas of Amsterdam around this time[20].
Only one politician at the time objected to the liberalisation, and was widely mocked for his unfashionable position, despite representing the majority opinion of the broader public[21]. It is unclear what made the sitting conservative government buy so wholeheartedly into the recommendations of the report; a sharp change from three years before, when the two Commissions were established, with the aim of determining how better to enforce the prohibition schedule[22]. By the time it came out, the newly declared aims were first and foremost to reduce the risks associated with abuse[23], and introduced the well-known hard/soft drug distinction, pertaining to acceptable versus unacceptable levels of social risk. Evidence for many of the claims of both commissions is still debated, such as the “gateway drug theory”[24], which both Hulsman and Baan rubbished, with no supplemented evidence[25]. MacCoun and Reuter found evidence that, at least in the Netherlands, experimentation with heroin was prefigured by experimentation with cannabis in young users[26], as do others[27].
The change in the Opium Law in 1976 made the hard/soft distinction sharper, by introducing heavier penalties for peddling hard drugs, while preserving the tolerance for cannabis. This was a result of a compromise between the left-leaning Social Democrats, who wished to preserve the liberalised policy, and their coalition partners the Christian Democrats, who wished to see a harder line on drugs[28], a policy strategy of “separating the market”[29]. The formal qualities of this legislature are of only limited significance, since application of the law is entirely discretionary in the Netherlands[30], unlike, for example, Germany. The exact policies in this case were delineated by the magistrate's office guidelines.
The Hulsman and Baan committees foresaw no danger of expanding criminal enterprise, since it saw the consumption of drugs as a morally neutral alternative lifestyle choice, and believed that import would mainly be undertaken by idealistic, well-meaning hippies[31]. This was soon shown to be colossally incorrect: criminal organisations cornered the wholesale market early on[32]. Despite being aware that the wholesale import of narcotics was financing a mushrooming organised crime sector, the Parliamentary Oversight Commission tasked with assessing the situation chose not to act on this information[33]. The changes The police themselves waited until the late 80’s to tackle large-scale drug trafficking[34], and began to restrict wholesale quantities of cannabis from sale in 1987 to combat the growing international trade centred on the country[35]. The legalization of cannabis and other narcotics did not even include an age limit on consumption until 1995[36].
Sympathy for the Deshevilled
The result of this laissez-faire approach led to rapid growth in public consumption, and downtown areas being taken over by a growing lower-class drug culture dominated by the most vulnerable demographics of Dutch society[37]. The hospitals were overwhelmed with drug addicts, whose erratic behaviour the nursing staff were not trained to handle, while prisons accrued increasing numbers of patients to their in-house psychiatric treatment programs[38]. This created a need to address the situation. The public pressure for the change in policy coming from the sober homeowners and families displaced by the proliferation of crime and squalor was ignored in favour of the testimony from “Junkie Unions” – drug users organising politically to advocate for their interests as they saw them[39]. The absurdity of this reversal, whereby well-behaved citizens being displaced by crime were ignored, and those displacing them given a specially recognised platform to make demands, is so absurd, it could be a Monty Python sketch. This farcical campaign led to the first needle exchange and methadone program in 1984, amidst the emerging AIDS crisis, and within four years the number addicts known to the program had increased to approximately 7 000, accounting for 1% of the population of Amsterdam. The concurrent approach of clearing public drug use areas arguably contributed to the fall in the number of new young drug hard-drugs abusers during this period[40].
The harm-reduction drive in Amsterdam soon spread to other major cities. These practices were consolidated under the 1995 Continuïteit en Verandering Drugsnota, which despite the government’s claim to the contrary[41], saw a significant departure from previous policy, as a result from local pressures and policy innovations, which made addiction treatment legally binding, and saw increased street-clearance and order maintenance by police, after protests against dealers and addicts in Arnhem made international headlines[42]. In the run-up to the new policy, free drug-content testing was made available, and drugs awareness campaigns were provided for schools. The change in policy also saw increased efforts to tackle smuggling and high-volume trafficking[43].
By the turn of the millennium, the seriousness of the efforts to tackle organized trafficking absorbed 75% of the total drug policy spending[44]. These efforts have made little impression; the province of Noord Brabant alone accounts for a vast proportion of amphetamines produced on the European continent[45], resulting in major environmental concerns from manufacturing runoff[46]. This is the effect of the so-called "backdoor problem": the shops which sell drugs are tacitly allowed to sell drugs for the personal consumption of their customers, but it is illegal to supply them. In practice, this means that the backdoor is often ignored, since policy guideline prevent the shutting down or prosecution of the shop owners. The trade with neighbouring countries and concerns about violent crime have led to increasing coffeeshop closures at the local level, and a steady decline in total numbers nationwide[47]. Brabant towns Roosendal and Bergen op Zoom became the first to shut all coffeeshops in their jurisdiction in 2009[48], and Rotterdam closed all coffeeshops near schools[49]. Noord Brabant also adopted an Utrecht system introduced in 2010 called the wietpas, whereby coffeeshops had to attain a license to operate, maintain tightly regulated membership, and sell a restricted menu of products[50].
Violence
Despite being among the most developed countries in the world, the Netherlands has seen a decline in safety in recent years. According to the field experts on homicide data collection, roughly 10% of all murders in the Netherlands are known to be related to the drugs market, compared to 4% for France, and 17% for the UK, whose equally awful drug policy I have also detailed. But unlike the UK, the Dutch drug policy applies asymmetrically across local jurisdictions, with some zones (like the town I live in) officially having revoked the licenses of their "coffee shops" back in 2008. Amsterdam and Rotterdam on the other hand, are rather more violent. Dutch homicide seems to be peculiar in several respects. While having the lowest level of legal firearms possession on the continent, firearms are involved far more often in murders (35%) than the average for the continent (19%). Dutch people are also more likely to get murdered in public, whereas most European murder victims get killed at home by their families and friends. Dutch murderers are also more likely to be of foreign extraction. 75% of all firearms offenses are linked to drug trafficking. Amsterdam has come to have a serious problem with armed youngsters, mostly of foreign extraction, as the city's police chief pointed out.
The Netherlands has seen a fall in the number of homicides and other violent crime since the mid-90s. This may have something to do with the aging of the population, which pattern was seen across the West in general, along with other factors like the spread of high levels of internet consumption in the past decade, which keeps more and more people at home, rather than out picking fights and seeking detergents for their hurts. But the clearance of open drug scenes, the expansion of Harm Reduction policies, and the shutting down of drug dealerships can't have been bad for the crime statistics either.
The current policy regime of the Netherlands is extremely dysfunctional. Aside from the above-mentioned rollbacks of the liberal policy, the attempts to crack down on any sector of the drugs industry are so lame as to be completely ineffective[9]. Parts of the Netherlands have gained a reputation for political corruption, as drug gangs place political candidates in local elections. The introduction of this disastrous scheme was done without any examination of the possible effects, and entirely speculative, and the result of willful, ignorant, and ideologically-driven political activism. Yet in a strange way, it is in keeping with the long-term historical attitude of the Dutch government and general population to narcotics, which has not seen a great deal of strict enforcement, except briefly in the 1930s, and again from 1953-1970. It is tied to a sense of identity, and criticism, unless it is in the form of a call for complete legalisation, is treated as a disconnection from reality.
The Dutch policy has resulted in unforeseen and often dramatic developments in large-scale trafficking and the normalisation of consumption, which necessitated the coping mechanisms developed in the 1980s and the increased restrictions appearing since the 1990s. The Dutch government and its supporters may pride themselves on a compromise, but for once it might be better to have some principle.
References:
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