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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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Netherlands: Doing Drugs Dutch Style
Nicola Jones New Scientist
Saturday 03 Nov 2001 WITHIN half an hour of arriving in Amsterdam, I've been offered sex, cocaine and ecstasy. It makes me think the critics are right about the effects of Amsterdam's soft drugs policies. But after three days of talking to the police, the "coffee shop" owners, treatment clinics and locals, I'm convinced that the approach is doing more good than harm. The coffee shops began selling marijuana as early as 1976, and today there are about 900 such shops. Roel Kerssemakers, who works for the state-run Jellinek drug-abuse clinic, says this hasn't increased the number of smokers. "The forbidden-fruit effect is gone," says Kerssemakers. "There's very little peer pressure to smoke." More importantly, the shops seem to have been fairly effective at separating soft-drug users from dealers who peddle harder drugs. "Coffee shops are the most hard-drug-free places in town," laughs Kerssemakers, thanks to regular visits from the police. And most smokers seem content to try cannabis in their youth and then give up drugs completely. "Cocaine and ecstasy have more to do with nightclubs than with cannabis," Kerssemakers says. Police officers on the street agree. They say that the dealers I encountered are small-timers who target tourists rather than locals. But recent changes in the drugs policy may have unintentionally jeopardised the separation between dope and harder drugs. In 1996, coffee shops were banned from selling to anyone under 18, which has "thrown a big vulnerable group onto the street", says Arjan Roskam, head of a union for coffee-shop owners. While the amendment was intended to delay the age at which teenagers start experimenting with drugs, it has probably only diverted users to less regulated sources. According to the Trimbos Institute, a mental health and addiction centre in Utrecht, about 10 per cent of under-age smokers now buy from criminal suppliers. The government also increased the penalty for growing marijuana from two years to four, discouraging smaller growing operations. "Now the crooks are in again," says Roskam. I think it would be better if it were all legal." He may have his wish. "There's a majority in parliament who are for legalising it, on the condition that we don't do it alone," says Kerssemakers. "If other big countries decide to, we would follow." Nicola Jones, Amsterdam
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