cannabisnews.com: Holland Reconsidering Cannabis Coffee Shops? Sure





Holland Reconsidering Cannabis Coffee Shops? Sure
Posted by CN Staff on January 21, 2003 at 11:48:11 PT
By Michael Hess
Source: BBSNews 
"The truth is that marijuana legalization would be a nightmare in America. After Dutch coffee shops started selling marijuana in small quantities, use of the drug nearly tripled (from 15% to 44%) among 18-20 year olds between 1984 and 1996. While our nation's cocaine consumption has decreased by 80% over the last 15 years, Europe's has increased...and the Dutch government has started to reconsider its policies." From the BBSNews Series: A Material Breach of Marijuana Facts: 
BBSNews - 2003-01-21 -- By Eric Johnson, January 21st, 2003 -- So a minion in the Drug Czar's office says in a letter that Holland is reconsidering its policies. Interesting that Czar John didn’t have the courage to take the responsibility for this letter himself. This letter is a good example of either blatant lying or a simple misunderstanding due to lack of Dutch language skills. I wonder which it is? Let's find out. On the ground in Holland the following rules are in effect: One may purchase 5 grams of marijuana or hash at any one of the nearly 1000 marijuana coffee shops in the land. One may smoke it anywhere where the owner of the property does not object and in all public spaces Five-gram purchase(s) at up to six different coffeeshops may be made until a maximum of 30 grams per person is reached. One may also visit the same coffeeshop six times. A visit is defined as walking through the door. This is not technically legal, as the bullying of the United Nations, the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden and France insists that all official paperwork comply with the standard prohibitions in the three United Nations Drugs Control Treaties. On the ground, however, one can't tell this is the case. Once again, one may possess and use up to 30 grams of marijuana or hash. The 5-gram per purchase limit was reduced from 30 grams in 1996. While this change was seen by prohibitionists as, "reconsideration, " it was actually a steadfast affirmation of the society's support for their Drug policy. It said to France, something would be done to prevent your people from coming here to buy large amounts of drugs. But we in Holland refuse to forbid this substance to our society or to visitors here, particularly on your simple demand. This hardly amounts to "reconsideration." The Dutch are not reconsidering like mini-Czar invents, because they have found through empirical research over three decades that marijuana does not provide either a gateway to harder drugs, nor does it form any significant harm to the user or to the society at large. This type of research has been mostly forbidden in the USA, as the ONDCP and DEA really don't seem to like the inconvenience of facts. So they don't use them and thus don't commission the research from whence they come. A Recent Rand Corporation Study and The ONDCP-commissioned-but-ignored-study by the Institutes of Medicine confirm what the Dutch have known for years. Namely, that the only "gateway," role for marijuana is that [in an illicit, non-regulated black market] marijuana dealers often have other things for sale. Dutch drug policy does two things. The first is to keep the markets for hard and soft drugs separated. This has been the greatest success of the coffeeshop system over last thirty years. The proof here lies in the increasing average age of heroin addicts, which indicates the young are not taking up the heroine habit which is part of Czar's doom and gloom scenario for any drug law reform. According to the 1999 Report, Licit and illicit Drug Use in the Netherlands, presented by the University of Amsterdam, less than 300,000 people in the Holland have anything at all to do with marijuana. From a population of 16 million, that is less than 2% of the population… Hardly the Belly up to the Hash Bar society that Czar's office would have us think is reconsidering its drug policies. The second main product of the splitting of markets is, as resources used to chase after marijuana smokers have been freed up, they have been better used to combat cocaine, heroine and XTC production and smuggling. Currently, there is a special prison for the parade of West Indian drug couriers who smuggle cocaine in their bowels located onsite at Schiphol airport. The justice ministry has made this a priority, leaving little room for other criminal cases or holding cells for violent criminals. In the last 3 election cycles and the one that ends on January 22, drug policy was and is not an issue. In the 35-page governing document created by the governing coalition in June (which is expected to carry through if the current coalition partners are reelected), drug policy issues occupy exactly one paragraph. The coffeeshop system and thus marijuana comprised one (1) sentence in this document. This sentence concerns not the existence of the coffeeshops, but rather a fine-tuning of where they are ostensibly allowed or not allowed. Once again, this is a triumph for the current policy, of which the average Dutchman is proud. It addressed so called "drug tourism," problems without threatening the coffeeshops as a whole. Trouble is, half of the sentence concerned the relative proximity of coffeeshops to schools. This is already addressed by national or local regulation, regulation that the owner of the "Bulldog" Coffeshop chain called in a TV interview last fall, the most stringent of any industry in the world. The other half-sentence about the proximity of coffeeshops to the borders was hailed by the Wall Street Journal as the beginning of the end for the coffeeshops when the governing agreement was made public. Belgium has now officially made legal the act of crossing the border, buying some marijuana, and "importing," it into Belgium when they de-criminalized last year. And Germany, after a few court rulings and some minor legislation, has long since given up complaining about personal trips to Holland for retrieval of personal amounts of marijuana. So complaints from neighbors cannot be blamed for the half-sentence "reconsidering," the Dutch Policy. Complaints about traffic and parking in the central districts by residents of a few border cities led to this phrase being inserted into the governing agreement. But problems do exist for the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board's dream of the demise of the coffeeshops: Dutch law. Most coffeeshops have been in operation for many years. But since 1996, as part of the bone thrown in to pacify French President Chirac after he labeled Holland a "drugs state," they have been operating as licensed businesses granted permission to be a coffeeshop by their respective municipalities. (It must seriously irk these editorialists that Holland was recently chosen by The Economist magazine as the best place to do business for the next 5 years.) Given these conditions, they can't just flip a switch and shut it all down overnight. The law simply won't allow that kind of broad stroke. One can't be, after following the rules and being granted permissions for say, fifteen years, suddenly put out of business. The owner has earned rights by existing and following the rules. Since the Government was elected and seated, not one coffeeshop has been closed due to this half-sentence of reconsideration. Solutions for the traffic and parking problems are being considered and reconsidered, as is everything requiring change in Holland. For example the solution in one city is to construct municipally owned coffeeshops along the freeway in order to better serve the German clientele. These would be leased to an operator chosen by the city once constructed. On other drug law reform fronts, the heroine maintenance program has shown the same success in Holland as in Switzerland. So they ministry of health is reconsidering the small size of the program and has asked permission to expand it. Also, after further reconsideration, medical cannabis is now available at certain pharmacies at a reduced price that is reimbursed by insurance, same as any other prescription drug. It seams the DEA isn’t the ultimate worldwide authority on the efficacy of medicine. To put it in Czar-sprache terms, Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong have a better grip on medicine than the DEA. Given the unscientific structure of mini-Czar's letter where he makes one claim about marijuana use in one country and then shifts to comparisons of cocaine use across the US and Europe as wholes to "prove," his point about marijuana, refuting any specific statistic about drug use in Holland in this letter to the nations DA's would be pointless. Mini-Czar used the statistical equivalent of bait and switch. Czar John's office clearly hasn’t the foggiest notion of what is going on in Holland. They don’t want to know, for the Dutch results after 3 decades cause them uncomfortable problems. For example the official Dutch Government documents show the normal course of marijuana use is as follows. Usually males begin around age 17. The appeal peaks at age 23, and by age 30, use fades away to almost nothing. This pathology doesn't jibe with mini-Czar's assertion that "nation wide, no drug forms the threat posed by marijuana." So the ONDCP must lie about Holland by intimating things like "reconsideration." So to answer the question at the head of this essay, is it misunderstanding or blatant lying, it has to be blatant lying. For in the final analysis, throughout all of Czar's rhetoric of doom and gloom, the Dutch society has simply failed to disintegrate as forecast.  Sidebar: In November 2002, a letter was published in the National District Attorneys Association by Scott Burns, Deputy Director for State and Local Affairs, Office of National Drug Control Policy. There are included seven dubious "truths" that more closely resemble classic "reefer madness" than any actual facts or "truth." They are reprinted in this sidebar and BBSNews is providing answers to these horrible mis-representations of the real facts, with a separate article for each one."The truth is that marijuana is not harmless. As a factor in emergency room visits, marijuana has risen 176% since 1994, and now surpasses heroin. Smoking marijuana leads to changes in the brain similar to those caused by the use of cocaine and heroin, and affects alertness, concentration, perception, coordination, and reaction time. One recent study involving a roadside check of reckless drivers (not impaired by alcohol) showed that 45% tested positive for marijuana." "The truth is that marijuana is addictive. Average THC levels rose from less than 1% in the late 1970s to more than 7% in 2001, and sinsemilla potency increased from 6% to 13%, and now reaches as high as 33%. Marijuana users have an addiction rate of about 10%, and of the 5.6 million drug users who are suffering from illegal drug dependence or abuse, 62% are dependent on or are abusing marijuana." "The truth is that marijuana and violence are linked. Research shows a link between frequent marijuana use and increased violent behavior, and youth who use marijuana weekly are nearly four times more likely than non-users to engage in violence." "The truth is that we aren't imprisoning individuals for just "smoking a joint." Overwhelmingly, we treat drug users, and especially marijuana users. Nationwide, the percentage of those in prison for marijuana possession as their most serious offense is less than half of one percent (0.46%), and those generally involved exceptional circumstances." "The truth is that marijuana is a gateway drug for many people. Not every person that uses marijuana will go on to use other drugs, but the overwhelming majority of people using other dangerous drugs - about 99% - began by smoking "a little weed." People who used marijuana are 8 times more likely to have used cocaine, 15 times more likely to have used heroin, and 5 times more likely to develop a need for treatment of abuse or dependance on ANY drug." "The truth is that marijuana legalization would be a nightmare in America. After Dutch coffee shops started selling marijuana in small quantities, use of the drug nearly tripled (from 15% to 44%) among 18-20 year olds between 1984 and 1996. While our nation's cocaine consumption has decreased by 80% over the last 15 years, Europe's has increased...and the Dutch government has started to reconsider its policies." To read the actual truth about Dutch Drug Policy from someone who is there and on the ground please click here. By Eric Johnson. "The truth is that marijuana is not a medicine, and no credible research suggests that it is. There is a protocol to allow some drugs - like cocaine and methamphetamine - to be prescribed in limited cases. Our medical system is the best in the world, and it relies on proven scientific research, not opinions or anecdotes. The primary medical "benefit" of the numerous chemicals in marijuana are increased risk of cancer, lung damage, and poor pregnancy outcomes."Related Link: http://bbsnews.net/bw2003-01-15b.htmlExcerpted from: http://www.ndaa-apri.org/pdf/alsobrooks_letter_nov_1_2002.pdf Source material provided by: NOS, AT-5, RTL, Telegraaf, Volkskrant, and NRC Handelsblad, as well as the 1999 study," Licit and Illicit drug use in the Netherlands," and official documentation from the Dutch Government. Special Thanks to Richard Cowan at -- http://www.MarijuanaNews.com -- for his research that complements my own research and concurs with and validates my own 16 years of on-site investigation.Source: BBSNews (NC) Author: Michael HessPublished: January 21st, 2003 Copyright 1990-2003 Michael HessContact: michael bbsnews.net Website: http://www.bbsnews.net/DL: http://bbsnews.net/bw2003-01-21.htmlRelated Articles by Michael Hess:Democrats and Medical Marijuana: It's Time http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15181.shtmlMarijuana Arrests 315 Times Terrorist Detentions http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15164.shtml
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