Posted on 01/01/2006 8:11:50 AM PST by Wolfie
Dutch Take Sober Look at Pot Laws
Marijuana can be sold and smoked in the Netherlands, but not grown or shipped. Wider legalization is debated.
Amsterdam -- Paul Wilhelm speaks about marijuana the way a vintner might discuss wine. He talks of aroma, taste and texture, of flowering periods, of the pros and cons of hydroponic cultivation. Wilhelm's connoisseurship might earn him a long prison sentence in the United States, but here in the Netherlands, he's just another taxpaying businessman. He owns a long-established pot emporium - the Dutch call them "coffee shops" - where customers can sidle up to the bar, peruse a detailed menu, and choose from 22 variations of fragrant marijuana and 18 types of potent hash.
Business got even better after Wilhelm's shop, the Dampkring, was featured in 2004 in the film Ocean's Twelve.
And yet life is not as simple for Wilhelm as it is for the pub owner down the street, thanks to the contradictory nature of Holland's famously liberal drug laws. Though the business is duly licensed and regulated, to run it properly he is forced to flout the law on a daily basis. While the Netherlands allows the sale of small amounts of marijuana in coffee shops, it is still illegal to grow marijuana, store it, and transport it in the kind of quantities that any popular shop requires.
Last month, the Dutch parliament began debating a proposal to change that by launching a pilot project to regulate marijuana growing. It was the brainchild of the mayor of Maastricht, a city near the German and Belgian borders that is plagued by gangs of smugglers. Proponents argue that legalizing growing will drive out most of the criminal element and boost responsible purveyors.
"The current policy is schizophrenic," Wilhelm said. "Under the rules, we can only keep 500 grams in the shop at any one time, so that means I have to have more delivered every few hours. And if the delivery guy gets stopped, they take everything, and he gets arrested."
For years, that odd state of affairs seemed to work well, because it allowed the Dutch to tolerate marijuana without having to risk the opprobrium that would come from legalizing it. But organized crime has come to play an increasing role in production, the government has found.
A majority in parliament has come out in favor of the bill to decriminalize growing, reflecting widespread Dutch comfort with a liberal marijuana policy. But the ruling Christian Democratic Party, which has increasingly tightened the rules on coffee shops, opposes it. Analysts expect the government to block implementation even if the measure passes.
"It won't solve anything," said Ivo Hommes, a spokesman for the justice ministry. "You will still have a large amount of people that will grow marijuana for illegal sales and for international export."
Though they consider the bill a good first step, Wilhelm and other coffee-shop owners agree. What they really want is full legalization of cannabis. Polls show that a majority of Dutch support that, but the government says it would run afoul of the international narcotics conventions that the Netherlands and most other nations have signed.
Whatever the fate of the legislation, the Dutch debate underscores a schism in the developed world over how to deal with drug use.
Even as the United States continues to spend tens of billions of dollars each year fighting a war on drugs that lately has included an increasing number of marijuana arrests, much of Europe and Canada have instead opted to treat drug use as a public-health problem.
While no country has gone as far as the Netherlands and allowed open sales of marijuana, in most of Europe possession of small amounts of cannabis, and even cocaine and heroin, merits only a fine. And penalties for drug dealing are far lower than in the United States.
Rejecting the approach that has filled America's jails with nonviolent drug offenders, Europeans and Canadians have embraced the concept of "harm reduction," which argues that illegal drug use is impossible to stamp out, and therefore the best public policy is to minimize the damage to society.
A central tenet of this approach is giving out clean needles to drug addicts to prevent the spread of HIV - something that remains controversial in the United States but is common in Europe and Canada.
But it goes further: Several countries allow government-funded "consumption rooms" for drug users, to provide them with social services and dissuade them from using drugs on the street. And at least four countries - Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain - have programs under which the government gives heroin to hard-core addicts and lets them inject themselves in a government-sponsored facility.
That idea is profoundly controversial, but the Swiss, who pioneered the practice a decade ago, insist that it has dramatically reduced drug deaths and street crime by addict participants, who no longer have to steal or mug to feed their habits.
Antonio Costa, an Italian who heads the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime in Vienna, has little patience for Europe's tolerant stance, which he believes is behind a recent upswing in cocaine use in the region. While overall European drug use has never been as high as that in the United States, American rates have been falling while European rates have been rising.
Many other Europeans, though, shake their heads at what they consider a moralistic, absolutist mind-set among America's drug warriors.
It's not that there is no common ground: Even the Dutch arrest drug smugglers (including marijuana traffickers), and in July the Dutch government signed a cooperation agreement with Washington.
But the Dutch coffee-shop policy is grounded in a belief that is anathema to American drug enforcers: that cannabis is no more harmful than alcohol. Dutch experts argue that this remains true even though much of the marijuana grown these days is far more potent than the kind smoked by the flower children of the 1960s.
American officials have long sought to discredit Europe's more liberal drug policies, and the Dutch experience in particular - sometimes with a selective use of statistics.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, for example, takes aim in an anti-legalization paper on its Web site under a subheading, "Europe's More Liberal Drug Policies Are Not the Right Model for America."
The agency points out that from 1984 to 1996, marijuana use doubled among 18- to 25-year-olds in Holland. What it doesn't say is that marijuana use in the Netherlands has been stable since then, and it remains lower than in the United States, which has seen use rise from a low in 1992.
Indeed, 30 years after the Netherlands began allowing open marijuana sales, only about 3 percent of the Dutch population - or 408,000 people - use marijuana in a given year, compared with 8.6 percent - or 25.5 million - Americans, according to the most authoritative surveys by both governments.
Dutch health officials say there is no evidence that the country's tolerant marijuana policy encourages use of harder drugs, which here is about average compared with the rest of Europe, and far lower than in the United States. To the contrary, proponents argue, the policy is designed to separate hard drugs from soft, because coffee shops found selling hard drugs are shut down.
In the United States, meanwhile, the war on drugs has increasingly become a war on pot.
A study of FBI data released last year by a Washington-based think tank, the Sentencing Project, found that between 1992 and 2002, marijuana arrests rose from 28 percent of all drug arrests to 45 percent, while the proportion of heroin and cocaine cases dropped from 55 percent of all drug arrests to less than 30 percent.
The rationale behind such a crackdown mystifies Dutch cannabis aficionados such as Wilhelm. He doesn't argue that marijuana is harmless. But he sees every day that it can be enjoyed recreationally and responsibly, just like alcohol.
"I've got three daughters, and I want to know that if they do try marijuana, they're not going to get it where someone is going to offer them some cocaine or an ecstasy pill," Wilhelm said. "I don't say that marijuana is healthy, but it's there. You can't close your eyes and think that if you lock everybody up, it's going to disappear."
Period, end of story.
L
I agree.
The people should pass an amendment, similar in wording to Section 2 of the 21st amendment, removing the power to regulate marijuana from the federal government and returning that power exclusively to the states.
Period, end of story.
But, I'll live with your suggestion.
Legalize it, regulate it, tax it. Put the criminal gangs out of the business. Let Wal-Mart, Safeway, and Osco handle the distribution and let American farmers handle the production.
L
In response let me ask you a question. If attitudes are not changing, then what is driving the decriminalization to which you earlier referred?
Maybe you should just support your statement with an actual cite instead of pointing me to these articles, forcing me to waste my time figuring out that they're totally irrelevant.
Sorry, but I've posted these (with citations) before, and more than once, so I thought you were at least somewhat familiar with the content.
Correct, the research does not examine marijuana specifically. Instead it generally examines prohibition. Maybe you don't see the link. I do.
You got nothing.
Never again say that I'm going to be defeated...never again bet and make me an underdog, until I'm about 50 years old. Then you might get me. But I didn't dance, I didn't dance for a reason. I wanted to make him lose all his power, I kept tellin' he had no punch, he couldn't hit, he swang like a sissy, he's missin', let me see you box, I hadn't start dancin' yet! You can't say my legs are gone, you can't say I was tired, because what happened? I didn't dance from the second round on. I stayed on the ropes. When I stay on the ropes, you think I'm doin' bad. But I want all boxers to put this in the page of boxing: staying on ropes is a beautiful thing with a heavyweight when you make him shoot his best shot, and you know he's not hittin' ya. I would've gave (robertpaulsen) two rounds of steady punchin', because after that he was mine.
Be that as it may, I thought your driving goal was to achieve lower rates of property crime and violent crime and screw everything else.
And I believe that this kind of redistribution essentially would be property crime on a scale that private criminals could never accomplish.
Gee, if you willing to consider the downside of socialism (like unemployment and the immorality of wealth redistribution), then maybe you'd be willing to consider the downside of drug legalization.
Sure, but I think that they would be very slight and generally outweighed by the benefits.
By simply legalizing marijuana? I don't think so.
Were you around in the early 1930's telling people to legalize alcohol, saying it would put the criminal gangs out of business?
The same loopholes and others existed during alcohol prohibition in the United States, and of course it failed. That's why the pot proponents want the same loopholes for their drug.
As for the Dutch, they might as well hand over the keys to the Muslims. Whatever happens to their pot laws is just a sideshow. It's just something to placate the natives as their country disappears.
Per capita? So if the population doubled and drug use quadrupled, you would only tolerate a doubling of anti-drug money because the population doubled? And that makes sense to you?
No, I would scream pretty loudly that enforcement of drug prohibition had not succeeded in preventing a rise in drug use and that therefore we should stop wasting our money on it. In fact, I do just that.
"use marijuana in a given year, compared with 8.6 percent ... Americans"
That seems like a very high percentage...so like, uh, man, uh, almost one in ten people driving down the road along side me is stoned at least once in a year?
In my opinion, city, state and local budgets. Massive propaganda by the marijuana pro-legalization groups. Apathetic voters. A liberal and sympathetic press.
I believe only Hawaii initiated decriminalization in the legislature -- all others states were via voter referendum. You favor pure democracy?
"Correct, the research does not examine marijuana specifically. Instead it generally examines prohibition. Maybe you don't see the link. I do."
Oh, I see the link, but only if you're proposing the legalization of all drugs, including prescription drugs. Legalizing just marijuana would have the same effect on property crime and violent crime as would legalizing just wine during Prohibition.
Well you can stop screaming. As I demonstrated to you (without rebuttal, I might add), drug use is relatively flat. Any increase in spending is due to the increase in population.
Keep in mind, half the federal ONDCP budget goes to anti-drug advertising, education, and drug treatment. The other half is spent on overseas interdiction and local border patrol.
Which of those ares would you like to eliminate?
A better indicator of marijuana use is "past month" usage, which was averaging about 5%.
And for the life of me I can't remember the last story I read about the Budweiser guys shooting it out with the Miller guys over turf.
I'd say you're being deliberately obtuse, but I think that's giving you just a shade too much credit.
The criminal gangs ala Capone were indeed put out of business by the end of Prohibition. The Sicilian mobs didn't touch the drug traffic for nearly 2 decades after that.
In fact, during the 'old days' of La Cosa Nostra anyone in their employ caught selling drugs was killed. Now they have wholeheartedly embraced it. It's led to some wonderful things like corrupted police departments ala New Orleans and Rampart in LA, politicians being bought and sold wholesale ala DC, and way too many good cops wasting their time on adults who like to smoke a plant in the privacy of their own homes.
Now, I agree that putting deliberately into your body that makes you more stupid than you already are is a bad idea. I will counsel against this at every opportunity I have.
However, this phoney baloney War On (some) Drugs is a cure that is far worse than the disease it was supposed to eliminate.
Legalize the crap. Let adults make their own decisions and let them pay for their own mistakes. I'm tired of subsidizing the 'problem' as well as the 'cure'. I don't want to pay for their dope, and I'm sick of paying to try to get them to stop smoking it as well.
L
You would if we only legalized wine.
"The criminal gangs ala Capone were indeed put out of business by the end of Prohibition. The Sicilian mobs didn't touch the drug traffic for nearly 2 decades after that."
So, we legalize drugs, then two decades later, what? Like you care.
"However, this phoney baloney War On (some) Drugs is a cure that is far worse than the disease it was supposed to eliminate."
The vast majority of the people don't feel that way.
"Legalize the crap. Let adults make their own decisions and let them pay for their own mistakes. I'm tired of subsidizing the 'problem' as well as the 'cure'. I don't want to pay for their dope, and I'm sick of paying to try to get them to stop smoking it as well."
All drugs? Well, before we do that, I suggest we eliminate these "social safety net" programs first, otherwise we'll never get rid of them.
Taxpayers.
Not a very good advertisement for libertarianism.
The Dutch are a Socialist Democracy.
The mob turns to profiting from some other victimless 'crime' if we're dumb enough to still be criminalizing such things.
Can you name any society or government in all of recorded history smart enough (by your definition) to NOT criminalize these "victimless crimes"? Surely there's at least one.
"However, this phoney baloney War On (some) Drugs is a cure that is far worse than the disease it was supposed to eliminate."
"The vast majority of the people don't feel that way."
Lurker, you are correct in your above statment, but RP puts the situation in perspective. It's all about feelings, and RP thinks his feelings are more important than your "FREEDOM" Lurker. Too bad you don't see it his way and then we could all just get along.
01
Being hooked on drugs is freedom? Not by my definition.
"Being hooked on drugs is freedom? Not by my definition."
Nor mine, but being free of asset forfeiture without being charged of any crime, would be more in line with freedom don't you think?
I do.
01
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