Dutch justice minister Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius inspects a prison in Vught, June 9, 2022 (LinkedIn)
The Dutch city of Rotterdam has been rocked by attacks on homes and stores. More explosions were reported in the first four months of this year than during the whole of 2022. The perpetrators, suspected to be drug criminals, have used fireworks, improved explosive devices and hand grenades.
According to local politician Vincent Karremans, who is in the same liberal party as me, one in four of suspects are under the age of 18.
Here in Amsterdam, police have also seen in an increase in teenagers selling drugs and taking part in drug-related violence, even assassinations. They are usually boys of Moroccan, Turkish or another immigrant descent.
The knee-jerk reaction on the right is to escalate the drug war. Give more money to customs and police. Weaken privacy rights, so police can tap phones without a warrant and share information on suspects with non-judicial agencies. Lengthen prison sentences for drug crimes.
But even Karremans, who is in favor of repression, knows: “that also causes unrest.” When the police get better at their jobs, so do criminals. The recent attacks in Rotterdam — some have been on the homes of family members of suspected drug dealers — follow the arrest and prosecution of prominent drug lords.
I argue in the Dutch newsletter De Nieuwe Vrije Eeuw that it’s time to rethink our policy. (more…)
German health minister Karl Lauterbach has had to scale back his plan for cannabis legalization.
Rather than allow Germans to buy up to 30 grams of weed in specialized stores, they could buy a maximum of 25 grams in “clubs” of 500 members.
There would also be a limit on the level of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol, a psychoactive substance) in weed sold to users aged 18 to 21.
Anyone could still grow up to three cannabis plants at home. Criminal records for possession and self-cultivation would be expunged if the bill is accepted by the Bundestag. (more…)
Belgian and Dutch police have got more money to interdict drug smuggling in the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam. Record amounts of cocaine were seized in 2022.
Yet the black-market price of cocaine is unchanged. Factoring in inflation, the drug has arguably become cheaper.
An analysis of European wastewater suggests that cocaine use in major cities, including those of the Low Countries, has increased.
“We are in a tunnel, where more and more resources are being allocated with no discernible result,” argues Bob Hoogenboom, a professor in police studies at the University of Amsterdam. Hoogenboom is also a co-founder of the Dutch branch of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, a nonprofit of former police officers and prosecutors who want to end the drug war.
So far, their appeals have fallen on deaf ears. (more…)
Manhattan, New York at night, April 2, 2020 (Unsplash/Peter Olexa)
A panel of external experts has advised the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve over-the-counter sales of naloxone nasal spray.
Naloxone is an affordable and risk-free way to save drug users from an overdose. The spray costs $250 without insurance and prevents deaths from fentanyl, heroin and painkillers. Naloxone has no effect on people who are sober.
Only 29 states allow pharmacists to sell naloxone without a prescription. Even in the states that allow over-the-counter sales, there isn’t enough of the stuff. A study published in The Lancet estimates that 1,270 more naloxone kits are needed for every 100,000 residents to avoid 80 percent of opioid overdose deaths. (more…)
United States Capitol in Washington DC, January 15, 2017 (DoD/William Lockwood)
American lawmakers managed to cram everything from a TikTok ban on government phones to a delay in fishing regulations (really) into this year’s $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill, but somehow drug reforms that had bipartisan support in the House of Representatives were omitted from the Senate version.
Tori Otten reports for The New Republic that proposals to allow cannabis stores to open bank accounts and end sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine were taken out at the last minute. (more…)
German health minister Karl Lauterbach (Bundesministerium für Gesundheit)
Germany plans to legalize the sale of recreational cannabis in 2024.
Germany allows medical use of cannabis, but it is seldom prescribed. Karl Lauterbach, the health minister, wants to license the production, distribution and sale of recreational cannabis. Consumers would be allowed to buy up to 30 grams in specialized stores and they could grow three cannabis plants at home. All criminal cases would be closed.
There would be quality requirements, but no price regulation. Lauterbach left open the possibility of a cannabis tax on top of sales tax (19 percent), but cautioned that legal cannabis must be competitive with the black market. (more…)
Dutch justice minister Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius listens to a debate in parliament in The Hague, June 2 (ANP/Sem van der Wal)
A consortium of Dutch investigate journalists discovered that the country spent €900 million to fight organized drug crime in the last five years without making a single arrest.
I write for Normaal Over Drugs, a campaign to normalize the drug debate, that the five-year failure is the umpteenth failure of repression, and the more reasonable policy is legalization. (more…)
View from the Dam Square in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, October 15, 2019 (Antonio Molinari)
Regular readers may remember I wrote in May about Amsterdam’s plan to ban the sale of cannabis to tourists. At the time, Mayor Femke Halsema argued a ban would help reduce drug tourism.
Studies have since found it won’t, so the mayor has found a new argument: licensed cannabis retailers are linked to organized crime.
Cannabis expert Nicole Maalsté and I have written a joint op-ed in response for Het Parool, the newspaper of Amsterdam. I’ll summarize our arguments here for non-Dutch readers.
Maalsté does research into medical marijuana at the University of Utrecht and runs the advisory Acces Interdit. (more…)
Port of Rotterdam, the Netherlands at night (Dreamstime/Péter Gudella)
Dutch police chief Andy Kraag revealed in an interview this month that three out of four of his detectives are working on drug cases.
Even if that’s a mild exaggeration (Kraag meant to underscore the scope of the drug problem), police for sure devote more resources to drugs than any other crime. 20 to 30 percent of their budget, between €1.1 and €1.6 billion, goes to fighting the drug war every year.
Drugs are only 1.6 percent of all reported crimes in the Netherlands. I argue in Sargasso, a Dutch news and opinion blog, that police priorities aren’t just wrong; they’re dangerous. Worse criminals go unpunished.
Not all crimes are the same
Police will argue not all crimes are reported and not all crimes are the same. Vandalizing a busstop and smuggling 500 kilograms of cocaine are both counted as “a” crime. That doesn’t mean they deserve equal police time.
So I compare drugs with another underreported but high-impact crime: sexual assault. Reportedly 1.1 percent of all crimes, experts believe the real figure is at least ten times that. When asked which crimes police should prioritize, most Dutch people would rank sexual violence in second place after murder.
Last year, police found a suspect in 51 percent of sexual-assault cases, down from 66 percent in 2020. Of those, 34 percent were brought to trial within six months. Both police and prosecutors say their goal is 80 percent. They’ve never met it. They don’t have the resources to investigate and prosecute all cases. When a Dutch news program requested the figures earlier this year, they learned that 808 investigations into sexual violence were on hold due to lack of funding or manpower or both.
There is no such backlog in drug cases. Between 2015 and 2019, the number of police investigations into organized drug crime alone — not counting small-time dealers and drug labs — nearly doubled from 341 to 613.
In 2019, parliament gave police an extra €15 million to investigate sexual assaults. It raised funding for the drug war by €150 million. It’s not just the police whose priorities are out of whack.
War on drugs
Including prevention programs, prosecutions and prisons, the war on drugs costs the Dutch taxpayer between €1.8 and €2.7 billion per year.
It’s not that the money goes to waste. Thousands of drug labs have been dismantled. The amount of cocaine intercepted in the port of Rotterdam has quadrupled in four years, from 20,000 to 80,000 kilos. One in ten cases police bring to prosecutors are drug-related. Half are taken to court. (Remember the figure for rapists was a third.) One in five prisoners were convicted of a drug crime.
Yet the price of cocaine hasn’t budged from €50 per gram in fifteen years. (Lower than in the United States.) It seems the more drugs customs and police intercept, the more drug cartels ship to Europe. Cocaine production in South America is believed to have tripled in the last ten years.
Half of under-35s in the Netherlands have tried ecstasy, the country’s most popular drug after cannabis, which is manufactured locally. Only 3 percent used ecstasy in the last year. The figures for amphetamines, cocaine and other drugs are even lower, and below the European average. Drug use in the Netherlands is low — and stable.
Some 130,000 Dutch people are addicted to drugs, half to cannabis, which is decriminalized. 600,000 are addicted to opioids and one million to either alcohol or tobacco. All of which are legal.
224 drug users died of an overdose or complication in 2018, the most recent figure available. 20,000 smokers die in the Netherlands every year. Alcoholism kills almost 2,000. But cops aren’t chasing brewers and bartenders.
Circular logic
For every action there is a reaction. When police devote more resources to fighting a crime, criminals will devote more resources to evading them — or resort to more brutal methods.
Sometimes the tradeoff is worth it. If we’re talking about child-pornography rings or human traffickers, I’m less worried about escalation than I am about saving the victims.
But most “victims” of drug crime are criminals, not users: teenagers from poor families, who are recruited to sell drugs, and who tend to end up either in prison or dead; dock workers, customs officials, security guards, even police officers, who are bribed or threatened to look the other way in the port of Rotterdam.
Police and government officials point to the destructive effect not of drugs, but of drug crime — on families, neighborhoods and businesses — to argue it would be “naive” to legalize drugs. That is circular logic: criminalizing drugs has led to suffering and violence, which is why drugs must be criminal.
At least half the rapists in the Netherlands go free, because our detectives are investigating an unending stream of drug criminals. We spend billions of euros to fight drug crime each year. Yet every year, the crime gets worse and drug use remains stable. We are doing more of the same and expecting a different outcome. What is that if not naive?
There’s good news and bad news from the drugs front in Amsterdam.
The good news is that a new coalition government of Labor, liberal Democrats and Greens want to pilot the legal sale of MDMA, also known as ecstasy. The three parties won the municipal elections in March.
The national government, in which the liberal Democrats rule with three center-right parties (including my own), has agreed to study the decriminalization of MDMA, although for medicinal use. A majority in the Amsterdam city council want to regulate recreational use as well.
The bad news is that Mayor Femke Halsema is still trying to convince the council to ban the sale of cannabis to tourists. I wrote an op-ed against her proposal in the NRC newspaper in April and have another story about it in Het Parool, the newspaper of Amsterdam.
The arguments used by both sides in Amsterdam will sound familiar to Americans. Proponents of decriminalization want to reduce harm. Opponents fear it would lead to more drug use. (more…)
Cannabis store in Amsterdam, the Netherlands (Unsplash/Jan Zwarthoed)
Experts and retailers caution against it, but the mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema, is determined to ban the sale of cannabis to tourists.
In an op-ed for the NRC newspaper, I explain why it’s such a bad idea. Far from deterring the worst tourists, a ban would lead to more petty crime, more public consumption of weed and more nuisance to residents.
Illustration from the cover of Der Spiegel, October 16
Der Spiegel makes a mockery of the Dutch drug policy. Under the header “Käse, Koks und Killer” (Cheese, Coke and Killers; English version here), the German weekly portrays the Netherlands’ stereotypical Frau Antje with a joint between her lips, a Kalashnikov in one hand and a round cheese stuffed with cocaine in the other. The Netherlands, it claims, is “terrorized” by drug traffickers.
To Germans who are thinking of following the Dutch in decriminalizing cannabis, Der Spiegel has a clear warning: don’t, or we’ll suffer the consequences. (more…)
American president Donald Trump arrives in Salt Lake City, Utah, December 4, 2017 (ANG/Annie Edwards)
Politico reports that President Donald Trump’s crackdown on opioids is backfiring.
Hundreds of patients told the political news website they have been suddenly refused prescriptions for medications they relied on for years — sometimes just to get out of bed in the morning — and have been left to suffer untreated pain on top of withdrawal symptoms.
Many … described being tapered off narcotics too quickly or, worse, turned away by doctors and left to navigate on their own. Some said they coped by using medical marijuana or CBD oil, an extract from marijuana or hemp plants; others turned to illicit street drugs despite the fear of buying fentanyl-laced heroin linked to soaring overdose death numbers. A few … contemplated suicide.
There is little evidence criminals are deterred by high minimum sentences.
If anything, they may have encouraged the spread of fentanyl, a drug that is highly potent in small doses. Under current law, it can be sold without triggering mandatory minimums. (more…)
American president Donald Trump arrives in Salt Lake City, Utah, December 4, 2017 (ANG/Annie Edwards)
Axios reports that President Donald Trump envies countries that execute drug dealers, tells confidants a softer approach to drug reform will never work and that America needs to teach its children they’ll die if they take drugs.
His administration is looking into triggering five-year mandatory minimum sentences for traffickers who deal as little as two grams of fentanyl. Currently, the threshold is forty grams.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that can be lethal in extremely small doses. Overdose deaths from fentanyl and other synthetic opioids have increased sixfold since 2013, outstripping those from every other drug.
