IP: Re: drug treaty

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

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