Drug policy of the Netherlands

The drug policy of the Netherlands is based on 3 principles:

1. Drug use is a public health issue, not a criminal matter
2. A distinction between hard drugs and soft drugs exists
3. High drug related public expenditure, the highest drug related public expenditure per capita of all countries in EU (139 EUR per capita, 2004).

It is a pragmatic policy. Most policymakers in the Netherlands believe that if a problem has proved to be unsolvable, it is better to try controlling it instead of continuing to enforce laws with mixed results. By comparison, most other countries take the point of view that drugs are detrimental to society and must therefore be outlawed, even when such policies fail to eliminate drug use. This has caused friction between the Netherlands and other countries, most notably with France and Germany. As of 2004, Belgium seems to be moving toward the Dutch model and a few local German legislators are calling for experiments based on the Dutch model. Switzerland has had long and heated parliamentary debates about whether to follow the Dutch model, but finally decided against it in 2004; currently a ballot initiative is in the works on the question. In the last few years certain strains of marijuana with higher concentrations of THC and drug tourism have challenged the current policy and led to a re-examination of the current approach.

Public health

Large-scale dealing, production, import and export are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, even if this does not supply end users or coffeeshops with more than the allowed amounts. Exactly how coffeeshops get their supplies is rarely investigated, however. What is certain is that coffeeshops do sell cannabis that comes from countries where it is illegal. The average concentration of THC in the cannabis sold in the coffee shops has increased from 9% 1998 to 18% 2005. One of the reasons is plant breeding and use of green house technology for illegal growing of marijuana in Netherlands. Large suppliers tend to be criminals motivated by profit who do not make the distinction between hard and soft drugs. The soft drug policy is not without flaws. It fails to address the issue of supply, which can promote problems of its own, such as the involvement of other drugs. Creating a highly controlled, legal production chain for cannabis to combat this problem has been proposed by a number of Dutch politicians over the last few years. By the end of 2005, the majority of the Dutch Parliament was in favour of an experiment with controlled cultivation and production of cannabis. The recent minister of Justice Piet Hein Donner announced in June 2007 that cultivation of cannabis shall continue to be illegal.

Non-enforcement

Cannabis remains a controlled substance in the Netherlands and both possession and production for personal use are still misdemeanors, punishable by fine. Coffee shops are also technically illegal according to the statutes but, as has been said, are flourishing nonetheless.

However, a policy of non-enforcement has led to a situation where reliance upon non-enforcement has become common, and because of this the courts have ruled against the government when individual cases were prosecuted.

This is because the Dutch Ministry of Justice applies a gedoogbeleid (policy of tolerance or allowance policy) with regard to soft drugs: an official set of guidelines telling public prosecutors under which circumstances offenders should not be prosecuted. This is a more official version of the common practice in other countries, in which law enforcement sets priorities as to which offenses are important enough to spend limited resources on.

Proponents of gedoogbeleid argue that such a policy offers more consistency in legal protection in practice, than without it. Opponents of the Dutch drug policy either call for full legalization, or argue that laws should penalize morally wrong or decadent behavior, whether this is enforceable or not.

In the Dutch courts, however, it has long been determined that the institutionalized non-enforcement of statutes with well defined limits constitutes de facto decriminalization. The statutes are kept on the books mainly due to international pressure and in adherence with international treaties.

Drug law enforcement

Despite the high priority given by the Dutch government to fighting narcotics trafficking, the Netherlands continue to be an important transit point for drugs entering Europe, a major producer and leading distributor of amphetamines and other synthetic drugs, and a medium consumer of illicit drugs. The export of the synthetic drug ecstasy to the U.S. during 1999 reached unprecedented proportions. The Netherlands’ special synthetic drug unit, set up in 1997 to coordinate the fight against designer drugs, appears to be successful. The government has stepped up border controls and intensified cooperation with neighbouring countries.

Although drug use, as opposed to trafficking, is seen primarily as a public health issue, responsibility for drug policy is shared by both the Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Sports, and the Ministry of Justice.

In contrast with most countries’ policies, the Dutch policy has yielded almost universally positive results in the “war against drugs.” The Netherlands spends more than €130 million annually on facilities for addicts, of which about fifty percent goes to drug addicts. The Netherlands has extensive demand reduction programs, reaching about ninety percent of the country’s 25,000 to 28,000 hard drug users. The number of hard drug addicts has stabilized in the past few years and their average age has risen to 38 years, which is generally seen as a positive trend. Notably, the number of drug-related deaths in the country remains the lowest in Europe.

On 27 November 2003, the Dutch Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner announced that his government was considering rules under which coffeeshops would only be allowed to sell soft drugs to Dutch residents in order to satisfy both European neighbours’ concerns about the influx of drugs from the Netherlands, as well as those of Netherlands border town residents unhappy with the influx of “drug tourists” from elsewhere in Europe. As of 2006 nothing has come of this proposal and Dutch coffeehouses still enjoy robust foreign patronage. The proposal is unlikely to come to part in practice since refusing citizens of neighbouring nations any services of the sort conflicts with the European Union’s policies surrounding the four freedoms.

The results of drug policy in Netherlands

In the Netherlands 9.7% of young boys consume soft drugs once a month, comparable to the level in Italy (10.9%) and Germany (9.9%) and less than as in the UK (15.8%) and Spain (16.4%), but much higher than in, for example, Sweden (3%), Finland or Greece. Dutch rates of drug use are lower than U.S. rates in every category.

The number of deaths linked to the use of drugs in the Netherlands, as a proportion of the entire population, is lower than the EU average. The Dutch government is able to support approximately 90% of help seeking addicts with detoxification programs.

Another effect is a problem with an extensive drug tourism from other countries. Drug tourists are in many cases excluded from the drug related statistics from Netherlands.

Criminal investigations into more serious forms of organized crime mainly involve drugs (72%). Most of these are investigations of hard drug crime (specifically cocaine and synthetic drugs) although the number of soft drug cases is rising and currently accounts for 41% of criminal investigations.

Implications of international law

The Netherlands is a party to the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, and the 1988 United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances. The 1961 convention prohibits cultivation and trade of naturally-occurring drugs such as cannabis; the 1971 treaty bans the manufacture and trafficking of synthetic drugs such as barbiturates and amphetamines; and the 1988 convention requires states to criminalize illicit drug possession:

Subject to its constitutional principles and the basic concepts of its legal system, each Party shall adopt such measures as may be necessary to establish as a criminal offence under its domestic law, when committed intentionally, the possession, purchase or cultivation of narcotic drugs or psychotropic substances for personal consumption contrary to the provisions of the 1961 Convention, the 1961 Convention as amended or the 1971 Convention.

The International Narcotics Control Board typically interprets this provision to mean that states must prosecute drug possession offenses. The conventions clearly state that controlled substances are to be restricted to scientific and medical uses. However, Cindy Fazey, former Chief of Demand Reduction for the United Nations Drug Control Programme, believes that the treaties have enough ambiguities and loopholes to allow some room to maneuver. In her report entitled The Mechanics and Dynamics of the UN System for International Drug Control, she notes:

Many countries have now decided not to use the full weight of criminal sanctions against people who are in possession of drugs that are for their personal consumption. The Conventions say that there must be an offence under domestic criminal law, it does not say that the law has to be enforced, or that when it is what sanctions should apply. . . . Despite such grey areas latitude is by no means unlimited. The centrality of the principle of limiting narcotic and psychotropic drugs for medical and scientific purposes leaves no room for the legal possibility of recreational use. . . . Nations may currently be pushing the boundaries of the international system, but the pursuit of any action to formally legalize non-medical and non-scientific drug use would require either treaty revision or a complete or partial withdrawal from the current regime.

The Dutch policy of keeping anti-drug laws on the books while limiting enforcement of certain offenses is carefully designed to reduce harm while still complying with the letter of international drug control treaties. This is necessary in order to avoid criticism from the International Narcotics Board, which historically has taken a dim view of any moves to relax official drug policy. In their annual report, the Board has criticised many governments, including Canada, for permitting the medicinal use of cannabis, Australia for providing injecting rooms and the United Kingdom for proposing to downgrade the classification of cannabis, which it has since done.

Recent developments

In 2005, Gerd Leers, mayor of the border city of Maastricht, criticised the current policy as inconsistent, by recording a song with the Dutch punk rock band De Heideroosjes. By allowing possession and retail sales of cannabis, but not cultivation or wholesale, the government creates numerous problems of crime and public safety, he alleges, and therefore he would like to switch to either legalising and regulating production, or to the full repression that his party (CDA) officially advocates. The latter suggestion has widely been interpreted as rhetorical. Leers’s comments have garnered support from other local authorities and put the cultivation issue back on the agenda.

By 2009, 27 coffee shops selling cannabis in Rotterdam, all within 200 meters from schools, must close down. This is nearly half of the coffeeshops that currently operate within its municipality. This is due to a new policy of city mayor Ivo Opstelten and the town council. The higher levels of the active ingredient in marijuana in Netherlands create a growing opposition against the traditional Dutch view of cannabis as a relatively innocent soft drug. Closing of coffee shops is not unique for Rotterdam. Many other towns have done the same in the last 10 years.

On October 11th, 2007, Dutch authorities agreed to ban the sale of psylocybin (magic mushrooms). Dutch health and justice ministers said that they have agreed to change the drugs laws to ban the sale and cultivation of hallucinogenic mushrooms.

The decision comes during an ongoing debate in the Netherlands about the safety of the so-called ‘magic mushrooms’ after a number of incidents involving tourists who had used them. There have been a rise in incidents with hallucinogenic mushrooms reported by emergency services; in 2004, 55 incidents were reported, which rose to 128 in 2006. This year there are over 100 incidents already reported, predominantly in the Amsterdam area.

In March 2007 a 17-year-old French girl died after she threw herself from an Amsterdam bridge. She had eaten magic mushrooms, but no direct parallels were drawn from her mushroom use to her death. The health ministry expects the ban to come into effect in the next few months after it has been approved by the parliament and the senate. The ban was called for by a majority in the Dutch parliament after the incident with the French tourist.

The change in the Dutch drug laws will mean that both growing and selling magic mushrooms will be banned and so-called ’smartshops’ that are selling them will be closed down. About 39 of around 180 so called ’smart shops’ sell the mushrooms in the Netherlands, and the Dutch market for hallucinogenic mushrooms is allegedly worth some 10 million euros (14 million dollars) annually. In the Netherlands the sale of dried and fresh magic mushrooms is forbidden and this is enforced.