The mayor of Amsterdam thinks the Netherlands could become a narco-state
How the war on drugs failed Dutch society
When I was eight years old, growing up outside of Boston, Massachusetts in the mid-1990s, I wrote a poem about cocaine so good that it won a school award. I took to the gymnasium stage and read it aloud with urgency. I was saving lives!
I had never seen cocaine and didn’t understand what it was. I only made it to that stage due to a wrong-headed American war on drugs-era school program called D.A.R.E (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), just like all the happy, sober children in the commercial linked above. We were subjected to a series of presentations from a bald, big-bellied cop named Officer Plimpton, who drilled into our heads that if cocaine didn’t kill us, he would, or at least that’s how I understood it.
We’ve all been touched by the war on drugs one way or another, and I got off easy having my first encounter with it be the mindfuck of D.A.R.E., considering the violence and social devastation it has wrought around the globe.
And increasingly in the Netherlands.
Last week, the Guardian published an op-ed with the alarming headline: As the mayor of Amsterdam, I can see the Netherlands risks becoming a narco-state. There has been debate for years about whether or not the Netherlands is already a narco-state: a state “where all legitimate institutions become penetrated by the power and wealth of the illegal drug trade.”
A Dutch lawyer, journalist, and witness involved in a drug trial have all been murdered; several crime journalists live under constant surveillance; the port of Rotterdam has become a hub of the global drug trade; young boys are involved moving cocaine and laying some of the nearly 700 doorstep bombs that exploded this year; entire communities are compromised; and laundered drug money has seeped into Dutch real estate, restaurants, financial services, and souvenir shops.
It feels like drug crime is getting worse. It feels like things are spiraling out of control. Cocaine usage is up across Europe, more and more kilos of cocaine are seized every year, and drug bombings in the Netherlands more than doubled in 2023 from the year prior.
Why? In the Guardian, Halsema pins this narco-state-ishness on “the international criminalization of drugs” without naming names:
The challenges we now face in the Netherlands are not an indictment of our liberal drug policy. Rather the opposite... What the Netherlands’ problems reveal is the need for a global shift in the current approach. It’s not a matter of retracting our user-centered policy, but rather advocating for international recognition that the war on drugs is counterproductive.
Halsema has been advocating for the legalization of drugs since the 1990s, when she worked as a criminologist for the labor party (PvDA). At a European conference on organized crime in 2022, she advocated for the legalization of cocaine (while acknowledging that it would likely never happen) and said “the war on drugs isn’t working.”
The Guardian op-ed came in advance of an international conference on 26 January in Amsterdam, “Dealing with Drugs.” On the conference website, the municipality of Amsterdam very much names names—and that name is the United Nations:
For half a century, the United Nations drug schedule has locked drug regulation around the world into a framework of misery and short-sightedness. Science has been sidelined and critics silenced, while international politics and opportunism have become the name of the game.
The 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs defined a number of substances as, well, “narcotic drugs,” ranked them by harm, and “required all countries to outlaw the production, supply or transportation of those drugs for non-medical or scientific purposes.” This extremely outdated system classifies even cannabis as a Schedule I substance, “a controlled substance with a high potential for abuse and no recognized medical use.”
Member states are legally required to limit the sale, use, and production of these drugs.
More UN regulations followed in the 1970s. In 1988, a new convention doubled down on enforcement, requiring member states to adopt criminal sanctions on producing, trafficking, and consumption. In 1998, the UN made it worse, setting the obviously unachievable goal of a “drug free world” in the next decade.
Just last week Ecuador provided a perfect example of the violence and social decay that can be caused by war on drugs, with a series of drug gang-led prison riots, the escape of two gang leaders from prison, police kidnappings, explosions, and the storming of a TV station during a live broadcast. Ecuador sits between Peru and Colombia, the two countries where the most cocaine is produced, and has become a shipping hub.1
Where does the Netherlands fall in all of this? Halsema writes:
The prohibition of drugs is enshrined in international treaties that limit the space for national drug policies, meaning we will have to forge new international alliances that prioritise health and safety over punitive measures. This will involve a collaborative effort to revisit and potentially revise these treaties, fostering a global environment where innovative, health-centric drug policies can be implemented without legal barriers.
Okay, international treaties and legal barriers, but how do UN regulations limit of the Dutch government specifically?
Sebastiaan Meijer, spokesman for the mayor, gave me a specific example of how this works. Amsterdam’s coffee shops are allowed to sell small amounts of cannabis for personal use under “tolerance policy” (gedoogbeleid).
The Dutch government has faced challenges in reconciling its relatively liberal cannabis policy with these international treaties. While they have implemented a system that allows for the sale of small amounts of cannabis in coffee shops, the production and wholesale distribution of cannabis remains illegal. This creates a gray area where the sale of cannabis is tolerated, but the sourcing and supply chain are not fully regulated.
The authorities’ hands are tied. They cannot experiment with the most heavy hitting alternatives to the war on drugs—a combination of legalization and regulation on drugs like cocaine and weed—because of the outdated UN regulations.
Halsema’s op-ed, and the conference in Amsterdam, comes at a time when sentiments are shifting a tiny little bit. In 2022, the UN General Assembly adopted its first resolution on drugs that did not include language about aiming for a drug-free world. It’s not a lot. The 1961 convention still stands. Hands remain tied.
A few years after my debut as a cocaine poet, I found weed and rolling papers in my mother’s closet. It scared me. The war on drugs, by way of a terrifying police officer in uniform, laid the groundwork for this unnecessary fear. This might seem like the minorest and most suburban imaginable negative consequence of drug criminalization, but I think it goes to show how pervasive and insidious it has been. Its tentacles reached even into my sheltered, ten year-old head.
The mayor of a city like Amsterdam—an international hotspot, a beloved tourist destination, and the biggest city in a burgeoning western European narco-state—making the case for a new ways of regulating drugs, speaking out against the long-entrenched global drug regime, and in favor of better policies, is a very encouraging step forward.
🔥 Hot Linkjes
Politics
The Volkskrant published a bombshell report this week naming the Dutch man who infiltrated Iran’s secret nuclear weapons program in 2007. Erik van Sabben, an engineer recruited by AVID (the Dutch intelligence services), installed the Stuxnet virus, created by the American and Israeli intelligence services, which broke down a thousand ultracentrifuges, and Iran’s nuclear program years. (Huib Modderkolk / Volkskrant - no paywall with this link as of this writing)
Everyone interested in European politics as it stands today should read this piece. It’s a fascinating look at how people impacted by the climate revolution are turning to the far right, and how this has left the climate change movement “with a potentially disastrous blind spot.” (Karl Mathiesen / Politico)
Geert Wilders withdrew a 2018 proposal to ban mosques and the Quran to kick off the latest round of cabinet formation talks last week. This news made the English press, I suppose it seems notable for a far-right leader to compromise? Although many of his extreme proposals are still on the table. And it’s not like the NL was ever going to ban mosques anyway. (Mike Corder / AP)
It’s an election year for the European Parliament. WTF is that, really? I had no idea until I read this post breaking down EU bodies like the European Commission, Council of the EU, etc.
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Business
A new profile of ASML downplays the trade war shenanigans I wrote about last week, and argues the “company has created a network of suppliers and technology partners that may be the closest thing Europe has to Silicon Valley.” (The Economist)
Brexit might ruin Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day in the UK, thanks to complications with Dutch flower exporters. (Jack Simpson / Guardian)
Speaking of the war on drugs, this documentary covers the incredible amount of toxic waste produced by the manufacturing of synthetic drugs. Dutch police find around 250,000 kg of this waste every year, which experts estimate is only around a third of the amount produced. (DW Documentary)
Science
Dutch scientists grew mini-brains in a lab. I’m not even going to try to understand this until someone on Substack breaks it down for me. (Denis Storey / Psychiatrist.com)
🥳 Leuke Dingetjes
“Los Angeles man who moved his family to Amsterdam WITHOUT a job says he found the ‘American dream’ in the NETHERLANDS” somehow this video made its way to the Daily Mail. I love vaguely threatening use of caps in this headline? Anyway the video is pretty cute.
A banger from Brussels
Euro pop rock is not usually my kind of thing? Is it? I cannot explain why I like this song so much. I also cannot stop listening to it?
*all typos in this post are on purpose
More and more cocaine seized in Rotterdam comes from Ecuador; the two countries signed a customs treaty aimed at tackling drug smuggling last year.
Thanks for this, Kate. I had no idea that the UN was so antiquated and unscientific in its views on drugs. It'll be interesting to see how the US' drug policies play into any push for liberalisation. From what I've seen, law-makers there tend to be conservative on the subject while those who vote for change through referenda are more open. I imagine that the US, like many other countries, is far too invested in seeing drug use as an issue of law and order and "morality" rather than one of public health, thus insuring that it is indeed in the realm of global criminality.