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IP: Re: drug treaty
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 16:24:33 -0500
Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 06:31:11 +0100 To: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn EDU> From: Peter Olsthoorn <petero () pi net> Hi Dave, One should maybe know there is a hard political struggle on this matter between France and The Netherlands for about 1,5 year now. France absolutely want to kill Dutch policy on soft drugs, and especially the practically accepted (but by law forbidden) selling of soft drugs which is free in ou so called coffee shops. Holland started a way to legalize soft drugs already years ago, since it's well known there is no obvious difference between levels of influence of drugs and of alchohol. A rather lot of French 'drugs tourists' from the North ofFrance visit Holland to buy weed. French president Chirac wants to stop this, although the drug problem in France is substantially bigger, also in the southern cities like Marseille, than it is in Holland. It's already a high level struggle between mr. Chirac and dutch prime minister Kok, as well as it is between two countries. There have been some serious clashes already. Kok demanded the French text you send us, which was agreed by all diplomats (they just drink) in Brussels in preparation for a European top conference, to be changed. There is a political dilemma now since Holland seems to stand alone. Even a liberal country like Sweden is in favour of the french text. Only some German states now are aware that Dutch drug policy is succesfull. One state even wants to open hasj shops, like Dutch municipalities have plans for. But now even some liberal columnists in the Netherlands start arguing for practical reasons that Holland can't stand it's solely role, which seems to me even worser than the French firm view on drugs. Peter Olsthoorn journalist
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