High time:
Netherlands moves to clean up absurd cannabis policy
For 40
years ‘schizophrenic’ approach benefited violent gangs. Not for much longer
Thu, Feb 6,
2020, 04:05
If there’s
one contradiction that goes to the heart of why Dutch drugs policy has lost its
way, it’s this: that while it’s legal for “coffee shops” to sell cannabis for
personal consumption, growing the cannabis they sell is illegal and subject to
stiff penalties that have forced production underground.
The result
of this wholly irrational arrangement has been to undermine pretty much every
significant policy initiative since 1972, when a Labour-led coalition
government took the innovative step of focusing public resources predominantly
on hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine.
A good
example of that skewing effect was that, while legalising coffee shops in 1976
meant effectively decriminalising cannabis, failing to consider where that
cannabis could be legally sourced drove the shops straight into the arms of
gangsters, who became rich and powerful in the process.
At the
moment, drugs are regulated, but by a mafia
“It was
crazy then and it’s still crazy now,” one former police officer says. “The
cannabis comes to the back door of the coffee shops, where it’s bought
illegally, with no tax. Then it’s sold legally at the front of the shop. That’s
no solution to anything. It’s simply creating a new problem.”
Prof Pieter
Tops – the country’s leading expert on the societal impact of organised crime
and author of The Netherlands’ Backyard, an uncompromising 2017 analysis of
this extraordinary relationship between the Dutch state and the drugs mafia –
agrees.
“This is a
schizophrenic situation we’ve somehow managed to live with for 40 years. But no
longer. The drugs gangs are increasingly out of control. That inevitably raises
the question of whether our policy of tolerance and decriminalisation may have
been a fundamental mistake.”
So where
does the illegal cannabis that’s sold legally in the country’s coffee shops
actually come from? The answer is the biggest open secret in the Netherlands.
Weed shed
of Europe
The
southern Dutch province of Brabant, where Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands
converge, is where the bulk of the country’s illegal marijuana is grown – often
hidden in plain sight, frequently in remote disused buildings owned by
hard-pressed local farmers, many on the verge of bankruptcy.
Not for
nothing is rural Brabant known as “the weed shed of Europe”. With a reputation
as the gold standard for cannabis, around 80 per cent of what’s grown here is
exported to European neighbours, including the UK and Ireland, while the rest
supplies the coffee shop network at home.
Such is the
scale of the business locally that in the pretty university city of Tilburg
alone the cannabis industry generates around €800 million annually and
“employs” 2,500 local people in “cannabis-related activities” every day,
according to a 2016 study of what’s intriguingly become known as “illegal
entrepreneurship”.
Experts at
Statistics Netherlands put the overall value of this illegal weed economy – in
so far as it can be calculated at all – at some €4.8 billion a year.
Cannabis
use by young significantly increases mental health risks
And, of
course, given those flourishing criminal networks, it’s no accident that
Tilburg has also emerged simultaneously as “the ecstasy capital of the world”
where the manufacture of synthetic drugs, including a whole range of designer
amphetamines, generated nearly €20 billion last year.
Dubious
honour
All of
which means that the tiny Netherlands now has the dubious honour of being one
of the largest illicit drugs economies in the world – with neither the will nor
the wherewithal, it seems, to challenge the bad guys who make this
already-wealthy country so much money.
It’s this
type of relationship between the Netherlands and its criminal underbelly –
known as the penose, slang from the old Bargoens language of 17th-century
Amsterdam – that has led the main police union, the NPB, to describe the
country as fundamentally “a narco state”.
In similar
vein, Max Daniel, a former head of the Netherlands’ organised crime unit,
observes: “We’ve been brought up in a society that believes cannabis is not
something criminal. So everyone says, ‘It’s only cannabis’. But the fact is
that cannabis trafficking is involved in almost all major criminal
investigations involving murder, weapons and drugs.”
For those
who see it this way – and there are many more since the murder last year of
lawyer and father-of-two Derk Wiersum (44) due to his involvement in a
high-profile drugs case – politicians have abdicated their responsibility by
failing to tackle the drugs barons who are now enjoying what De Telegraf
newspaper recently called “a new Golden Age”.
“At the
moment, drugs are regulated, but by a mafia,” says retired lawyer Raimond
Dufour, chairman of the Netherlands Drugs Policy Foundation, which advocates
legalisation of all drugs, including cocaine, heroin, amphetamines and ecstasy.
“What we
propose is that government should make the rules, and that drugs should be
regulated by law, including their quality, cost and supply. That would not
alone save lives immediately, it would ultimately put the criminals out of
business.”
Sensible
solution
Even in the
Netherlands the legalisation of hard drugs is never going to happen, of course.
What is on
the verge of happening, it seems, is that finally – 40 years on from the
reforms of the 1970s – there are now moves at government level to find a more
sensible way to supply cannabis to coffee shops without subsidising
criminality.
The Rutte
government has set up a four-year pilot scheme in 10 cities under which,
starting next year, 79 coffee shops – 14 per cent of the total – will be
supplied by officially regulated cannabis producers, allowing the authorities
to monitor the type, quality and strength of what’s on offer.
A number of
problems have already been identified, particularly the fact that the four main
cities, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht are not involved in the
trial because initial soundings indicated it would be too difficult to get each
and every coffee shop to sign up.
Legal
cannabis sales in Europe have the potential to grow 100-fold to €35 billion a
year by 2024
Another
problem is that the trial will not allow the coffee shops to sell imported
hashish, which makes up around a quarter of their sales. Similarly, it will
have a limited number of varieties of marijuana and hash on offer, and this
could lead to other types being sold on the street.
In addition
the Council of State, the government’s highest advisory body, warns that, as it
stands, the pilot will not be broadly based enough to allow any hard and fast
policy conclusions to be drawn from its findings.
Even so,
Paul Depla, mayor of Breda, one of the towns taking part, says rational change
is long overdue.
“Coffee
shops have been in an impossible situation. If they were bars, it would be like
being told: you can sell beer at the counter but brewing it is illegal. After
40 years of an inconsistent and half-hearted tolerance policy, it’s time to
wave goodbye to this madness.”
Tax bonanza
Many
believe that if it’s successful, the scheme will lead to the legalisation of
both cannabis and cannabis production – with the extraordinary bonanza that
would mean for Dutch tax coffers.
It would
allow the Netherlands to compete on the international market for the first time
with countries such as Canada, South Africa and the US, where cannabis is legal
in 11 states, and perhaps sooner rather than later with Luxembourg, Switzerland
and Malta, where changes are already afoot.
Even as
things stand, legal cannabis sales in Europe have the potential to grow
100-fold to €35 billion a year by 2024, forecasts Prohibition Partners, a
UK-based consultancy that describes itself as “the voice of the cannabis
industry”.
In regional
terms, this would make Europe the world’s largest legal cannabis market – with
the Dutch as the undisputed market leaders.
After all,
says Esther Brans, who was born in the Netherlands and who is now creative
director of Tumbleweed Dispensaries in Colorado, a chain of seven shops selling
seeds and other cannabis edibles, the Dutch have the strongest “national brand”
when it comes to the marijuana industry.
“A Dutch
connection gives legitimacy to a cannabis product, a kind of sexiness. People think
fashion from Italy, cars from Germany – and weed from Holland.”
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