Dutch drug policy, pragmatic as ever

[edgarshade]

Guardian

Shirley Haasnoot
Thursday 3 January 2013 13.31 GMT

The Dutch approach is about curtailing crime and hard drug use – and tourists needn't worry too much about a new rule.

I went to school on the border of the sleepy university town of Leiden, in the Netherlands. Drugs, ranging from cannabis in coffee shops to much stronger substances, were around. What kept me and almost everyone I knew away from those drugs was detailed information about their effects, which we gathered from our teachers, from television and from teenage magazines.

So when I studied at York University in the 90s, I didn't join the students who took LSD before going into town at night. They said it was great fun but I knew a trip on LSD could go badly wrong. Smoking pot, for sale in government-controlled coffee shops in my home town, would have been a much safer option for them (though not completely harmless either). But in England all drugs seemed to be viewed as equally dangerous.

Education and government information have traditionally kept drug-related health problems in the Netherlands low, compared with the rest of Europe. One in five Dutch young people say they have tried cannabis, which is the European average – but the figures are much lower than average when it comes to hard drugs.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/03/dutch-drug-policy-pragmatic

 

[bingey]

Look into the current situation in the Netherlands , things are changing fast . There are only about 600 coffee's left nation-wide and about half of those will probably stop selling to foreigners in this year , also don't forget the 2008 Mushroom ban .

Did I mention they are going to try banning all hash on the ridiculous presumption that anything with a thc content higher than 15 % poses an immediate risk to the users mental well-being?

 

[drfist]

I live in rotterdam and I don't see this whole thing happening at all. it's a federal(?) country wide law but individual cities can decide themselves whether or not they will enforce these laws and the three mayor cities already said no. amsterdam for one will never illegalise pot selling to tourists ever. its what it lives on. it cannot afford not to.

 

[Psychonauticunt]

Look into the current situation in the Netherlands , things are changing fast . There are only about 600 coffee's left nation-wide and about half of those will probably stop selling to foreigners in this year , also don't forget the 2008 Mushroom ban .

Did I mention they are going to try banning all hash on the ridiculous presumption that anything with a thc content higher than 15 % poses an immediate risk to the users mental well-being?

I don't think half of those will stop selling to foreigners; the reaction to the wietpas has been mostly negative. The conservative and religious cities in the Dutch Bible Belt will probably continue to disallow coffeeshops, and some of the Southern cities will join them, but I think the majority of the country will continue to serve foreigners. Mushrooms are banned, but you can still buy spores, grow kits, and psilocybin truffles.

There's been talk of banning cannabis with over 15% THC content as a hard drug, true, but I don't think they'll be able to implement it. How is it practically possible? I mean, if a coffeeshop buys some weed and stores it on the premises, some weed which was 12% THC in the beginning will exceed 15% when the jar is almost empty and there's just shake and trichomes at the bottom. Coffeeshops can't possibly test all the cannabis products they buy to ensure they're within limits. I don't think they're gonna get very far with this.

 

[bingey]

^
You're probably right but it just scares me how willing the Dutch seem to let this one old fart (Opstelten) personally take all their acquired benefits away from them.

 

[augustaB]

As a footnote to this old thread I can report that the "Wietpas" (weed card) system is slowly coming unstuck.
Various towns in the Southern Provinces that adopted the system to stop "drug tourism" have come to the conclusion that in view of the growing petty criminality in their towns resulting from the illegal dealing in drugs, the coffee shop system has clear benefit.
Maastricht has yet to change, but Eindhoven has abandoned the wietpas system and many other smaller towns have also abandoned it. The main hold out is Breda and the towns of Zeeland.