HOLLAND - Lecturing in Sociology at the University of Amsterdam, Director of the Research Programme on Drug Addiction of the City of Amsterdam.

ABSTRACT: The author describes a few aspects of the Dutch drug policy. This policy, as applied in Amsterdam, does not promote drug consumption; thus there is no need for prohibition which is only profitable to certain bureaucrats, the mafia, etc. Having to do with basic principles of health care and law enforcement, the "Dutch Experience" could be applied internationally, once adjusted to the realities of each country.

("THE COST OF PROHIBITION ON DRUGS", Papers of the International

Anti-prohibitionism Forum, Brussels 28th september - 1st october 1988; Ed. Radical Party)

For this talk, I have decided to present some of the lesser known bases of Dutch drug policy. I will also include some data on drug use in Amsterdam, in order to demonstrate that the drug policy in force in the Netherlands does not increase drug use, but may even have the contrary effect. Before going into this rather academic topic, however, I should like to make a few comments on prohibition.

If the prohibitionists of the world were really serious about their concern about drug use, they would take more heed of the extensive evidence as to the irrelevance and counter-productive effects of a war against drugs. If they were serious about their concern about drug use and misuse, they would apply the vast knowledge acquired on drug use to create better and far less harmful policies. But the world's prohibitionists do not give a damn about drug use, or the people involved. Prohibition is a gut feeling - the opposite of rationality. Politically speaking, it belongs to the category of ideologies which condone racism and totalitarianism.

Perhaps equally important, it provides careers for many individuals - in the fields of diplomacy, business, or frankly speaking, the Mafia. There is money to be made in the vast and monied bureaucracies set up to wage the war against drugs. These bureaucracies are maintained by the State to legitimize just about any sort of institutional violence against, for the most part, powerless minorities and States.

And, thanks to modern communications technology, this modern form of witch-hunting has become a world-wide affair. The tragic result of all this is that millions of people - not only in the U.S., but in Europe as well, are convinced that drugs are the cause of most misery, which they have been taught to associate with drugs - like the many millions in past centuries who were convinced that witches were the cause of plagues, droughts and famines.

Prohibition is a grotesque failure, because its methods are based on an even more grotesque misinterpretation of the power of the State. That misinterpretation is partly created by State servants themselves. By proclaiming the lethal dangers of drugs and by suggesting that only State power is adequate to defend the public from these dangers, the public automatically expects State institutions to deal with drug use. It is in this sense that the so-called drug problem is an essential tool for State institutions in maintaining their authority and suppressive powers.

I consider this initiative of the Radical Party of Italy a brave and humane attempt to focus attention on the cruelty and uselessness of the war against drugs. In Italy - a country where even the Communists mistakenly equate the war against drugs with the struggle against the Mafia - a political basis for a dialogue in the interests of changing drug policy fortunately exists. I hope that example will be followed in many more countries.

I was invited to speak on the so-called Dutch Experience with drugs and drug policy.

I will begin by attempting to explain what the "Dutch Experience" means, and stress that expression can only be meaningful in an international discussion of drugs, in a perspective going beyond the borders of the Netherlands. The situation in my country, which foreigners see as the Dutch Experience with drugs, is not experienced as a policy to be set apart from any other nation's policy. In our country, the drug situation is considered as just one instance of a loose consensus about the social merits of penal law. Penal law in general is an instrument for solving social problems or delinquency.

One of the difficulties in describing the so-called Dutch Experience is that it is not clear whether that experience is conceived of in the same way outside of the Netherlands as it is within the country. However, for the sake of brevity, I will sum up that experience as the concept that there is little or no connection between penal law and drug taking behaviour, because the Dutch are allegedly "permissive".

Also, the Netherlands, in spite of its very small size, has a wide variety of drug policies. Unlike Germany, we do not have a homogeneous drug policy. In Italy, that situation of wide local differences will not be unfamiliar. For example, in Italy morphine was given to addicts in Florence and Naples, when such practice was impossible or even forbidden in other cities. In Turin there has always been some form of methadone distribution by State institutions, while in Milan there is nothing of the sort. And, if I am not mistaken, Milan to this day has no agencies for aiding opiate addicts by providing them with methadone.

Similarly, in the Netherlands there are vast differences in the drug policies in the various zones, and not only for cannabis and its derivatives, but also for opiates.

In Amsterdam, it has gradually become possible to freely buy cannabis and similar drugs in specialized shops. In Utrecht or Rotterdam, however, this is non-existent, or rare.

In the eyes of foreigners, the Dutch Experience might be considered the drug policy of Amsterdam, where, since the 17th century, there has been a much higher degree of individual freedom than in other areas of the nation. It is also true that Amsterdam is the most prominent city in the Netherlands as regards illegal drugs (but I will go into that further on). Amsterdam, besides being the largest city in the country - although its population is only 650,000 - is also the artistic and intellectual capital. Experimentation with ideas and life styles is an old tradition in that city (due to its long history of offering asylum to large numbers of immigrants and refugees. Amsterdam was also once a very active international seaport, with a heavy influx of foreigners and new and strange products).

Thus, I should equate the so-called Dutch Experience - as I have already said - with the absence of police involvement, which has been the case in Amsterdam for 25 years.

If I must speak of any homogeneous and overt aspects of anational Dutch drug policy, I could cite officially-adopted guidelines for the non-prosecution for individual cannabis use or its small-scale retailing, even if those guidelines are not always interpreted in the same way throughout the Netherlands and is in some areas applied restrictively by local magistrates.

In terms of penal law, the interpretation of the Dutch Experience is somewhat more complicated than most foreigners think.

Until the early 1980s, there were 25 persons per 100,000 in our jails, as opposed to more than 100 per 100,000 in Germany. One of the more general aspects of application of Dutch Penal Law was once its insistence on trying to keep people out of prison. During the last six or seven years, this has somewhat changed. However, I should point out here that the relative absence of penal law was not restricted to drug use, but was the procedure adopted for many types of legal or deviant behaviour. A well-known example was the development of a vast circuit of bars and cafes for the Gay Emancipation groups of the 1970s. That substantial sub-culture was made up of declared homosexuals, who behaved in a fairly open manner which astounded many foreign visitors. The most familiar example is perhaps the elimination of penal penalties for prostitution and most forms of pornography, which produced a completely open and, for the most part, non-criminal sector of commercial eroticism.

The absence of penal penalties in many areas of deviant behaviour or transgression of the law was made possible partly by the existence of alternatives. In cases where the authorities had to intervene, treatment or other alternatives were often preferred to full-blown penal processes. Where the authorities were not forced to intervene, it was possible to decide in favour of simply closing the case waiving procedure. This was possible thanks to the legal right of discretion a Dutch prosecutor enjoys, in deciding whether the offender is prosecuted or not. This means that, while a German prosecutor is compelled by law to proceed with a case, a Dutch prosecutor may decide to keep a case out of the penal courts if he believes that such a decision will benefit both the transgressor and the State.

The Dutch Experience with drugs, as perceived by foreigners, is just one example of a far more general attitude, particular to the city of Amsterdam towards some forms of deviance.

That attitude might be described as social pragmatism; as long as the behaviour of a certain group is not particularly harmful to others, that group is left alone, and at even times given assistance by specialized institutions. In the case of opiate addicts, it was realised early on that their dependence on the black market necessitated special forms of social assistance. Those services were developed by trial and error in Amsterdam to adapt to the highly differentiated health care system. And here we have another aspect characteristic of Dutch social policy. One of the basic aims of the health care institutions is to make assistance as accessible to the largest possible number of potential users. This will explain much about the direction development health care for addicts has taken in Amsterdam. When addicts did not use the health care institutions, it was reasoned that those institutions did not sufficiently meed their needs. This resulted in Amsterdam's famous low-threshold methadone programmes - the

most familiar expression of which are the methadone buses.

So, in attempting to understand the Dutch Experience, it is necessary to keep in mind that, as regards both drug policy health care, and penal law involvement, Dutch drug policy is normal and fits into the context of more general principles of health care and law enforcement. This means that Dutch drug policy is not something special, invented purposely for national use.

Another aspect of Dutch social policy is the awareness that policies of ostracism are very difficult to apply. There has always been a sector of the population - even in Amsterdam - which was favorable to moving all addicts and other deviants to a small island off the Dutch coast. That sector, however, has remained small and does not have any relevant political support. The same holds true for economic ostracism. No one in the Netherlands would, for instance, seriously propose that addicts without a job be denied the basic economic assistance of approximately $500.00 a month normally given to the unemployed.

Summary.

Dutch drug policy is just one application of broader principles of social administration which are characterized by the following:

l) as little exercise of penal law as possible;

2) the creation of specialized health care institutes accessible to a maximum number of potential users;

3) minimum State-supported social ostracism of deviant groups;

4) realistic economic bases for all citizens, regardless of social status or level of deviance.

Of course, the methods and levels of application of these basic principles is a matter of constant political debate. And recently, some of the principles themselves have come under attack.

I believe that the almost world-wide perception of the socalled Dutch Drug Experience has become little more than a rhetorical tool - or even better, a simplification - used (albeit in different contexts) by both convinced prohibitionists and ardent anti-prohibitionists.

The fact that the Dutch authorities have never declared war on homosexuals, drug users or AIDS sufferers, is used by prohibitionist and anti-prohibitionists alike, grossly exaggerating the extent of freedom existing in the Netherlands - even though I do believe that in certain areas, small but extremely important differences do exist between freedom in the Netherlands and other countries.

I have attempted, with this analysis, to demonstrate that drug policy in the Netherlands is just one expression of the country's more general administrative principles. Consequently, Dutch drug policy cannot be exported wholesale, isolated from its context. If a country should decide to borrow some single aspects of that policy, it would soon become clear that the results produced were different than those produced in Amsterdam. Dutch drug policy cannot be transplanted without the many underlying, and more general, social/economic policies.

Now that I have attempted to place the Dutch Experience in the proper perspective, I should like to present some more recent data on drug use in Amsterdam, the so-called the "Drug Capital of Europe" - a ridiculously gross misnomer.

My intention here is to demonstrate that the application of more general principles of social administration to drug policy - i.e. a somewhat lesser involvement of penal law than that existing in other countries - does not create drug use. This is important, since one of the stronger prohibitionist arguments is that the reduction of police involvement would create an explosion in drug use and misuse.

It is by now common knowledge that hashish and cannabis can be bought in Amsterdam in approximately two hundred shops. The price for this easily- and cheaply-produced drug is relatively low, between four and five dollars a gram. This is less than half the price paid in other cities like Rome or Milan, and a third the price paid in Frankfort or Berlin. But, how many there actually use the products sold? The University of Amsterdam, earlier this year, conducted a study on a representative sample of more than 4,000 of the population of Amsterdam over 12 years of age.(1) The subjects were asked if they had used cannabis, even once, during the previous year. 9.3% answered positively, and 5.5% had used cannabis during the month previous to the interview. The highest percentage - 14.5% - which had used the drug during the previous month were individuals around 23 years of age. This means that, even in conditions of easy access and a relative absence of social stigma, the popularity of cannabis is low.

But what about the modern devil-drug, cocaine, which has been available in Amsterdam since the early 1970s? I investigated cocaine purity in Amsterdam in 1987 and found it to be high.(2) The average price is about $90.00 a gram, and tending to drop. Individual cocaine use and small-scale retailing in Amsterdam is not interfered with at all, except by chance. But how high is cocaine use in Amsterdam?

Out of the total population, only 5.6% have ever tried cocaine, and no more than 0.6% had used cocaine during the month previous to the interview.

And what about the use of opiates in the "Drug Capital of Europe", where good heroin is easily available for about $10.00? For a combination of legal and illegal opiates - i.e. both prescribed and non-prescribed - the result was 9.9%. Those having used it the previous month amounted to 0.9%. Even multiplying these figures by two, raising them 100%, compensating for any doubts as to the reliability of the statistics, we cannot say that the current illegal use of drugs in the "Drug Capital of Europe" can be considered high, by any standard.

In spite of America's century-long holy war against certain psychotropic substances, use levels there - measured in comparably similar ways - are much higher.

I would willingly compare the figures for Amsterdam with those of other European capitals, but such figures do not exist. This, by the way, is one example of why prohibition could be defined a religion - it seems to have little need for objective data to justify its cause.

It is now clear that the availability and relative ease of access of drugs such as cannabis, heroin and cocaine do not determine levels of use. This observation is highly relevant in assessing the effects of police involvement in combatting drug consumption. Levels are determined by many different factors - social trends and utility probably being the largest ones. It is, however, my opinion that levels are far less important thanpatterns of drug use. Even if, let's say, 50% of a population had used cocaine during the month previous to an interview, that would not be the important point. What would be relevant would be the degree of expertise with which they use it, how often, how much, and in what circumstances. Using cocaine in the depressing social conditions of urban ghettos leads to different patterns and rules of use than cocaine sniffing to heighten the pleasures of disco dancing or at a dinner party. And this holds true for any drug.

Serious social risks develop only with illegal drugs. Those risks which can vary from small and subtle forms of micro-social ostracism to State- and prison-supported ostracizing, create massive victimization. Fortunately, this victimization process in the Netherlands is recognized at all levels of policy making. That is one of the few aspects of Dutch drug policy which could be exported on its own. Paraphrasing Nadelman's excellent article in Foreign Policy, "This would be a good export product".(3)

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(1) Sandwijk, P.; Westerterp, I. and Musterd, S., "The Use of Legal and Illegal Drugs in Amsterdam. Report of a Survey among the Population of 12 Years of Age and Older". University of Amsterdam, 1988. (Available in Dutch only).

(2) Cohen, P., in cooperation with Korf, D. and Sandwijk, P., "Cocaine Use in Amsterdam in Non-Deviant Sub-Cultures", University of Amsterdam, l988. (Draft version available in English.)

(3) Nadelman, E., "U. S. Drug Policy : A Bad Export", Foreign Policy, No. 70, Spring 1988.