NL: CALL FOR LEGALIZATION LOUDER AND LOUDER

The current fight against drugs costs much too much money and has no impact whatsoever, say Judge and prominent professor of criminal law Theo de Roos and former Amsterdam chief of police Eric Nordholt (photo).

Nobody within the justice system is glad that they have to deal with this mess, says de Roos, who is professor of criminal law, solicitor and judge.

That applies to police chief commissioners, as well as colleague judges. They are confronted with yet another drug case, yet another addict. I think that the majority wants another approach. De Roos pleads for legalization or regulation of drugs.

Eric Nordholt, former Chief-Commissioner the Amsterdam police force agrees with him. In the forty years which I have served at the police force, the problem has become only more terrible. Everyone within the police force and judicial authorities knows that they have lost the fight. It is a lunatic situation, and there is no solution like this.

A commission of the United Nations proclaimed in 1998, that drug production - and use - in ten years time would be considerably surpressed. A report published by the European Union last Friday reveals that the results are disastrous. There are more drug deaths and cocaine users then ever and a record number of cannabis smokers.

I do not deny that drugs can be dangerous, says De Roos, but according to me the treatment is now way more terrible than the disease. The social costs of policing and prosecution are immense, and the import of drugs continues undiminished. Then you must reflect seriously: do we do have continue anyway, with this hard treatment? This way criminal organizations are getting richer and richer in the easiest possible way: the really big boys are almost never caught.

Hard drugs to be obtained in pharmacy

For dozens of years now governments worldwide spend hundreds of billions on the suppression of drugs - without any result. It is time for another approach, according to more and more experts.

It is 2017 and you want a little coke. You walk to the shopping center, walk into the local branch of the government company Holland Drugs Ltd, and upon showing your passport it is possible to get a couple lines of cocaine. Do you want some xtc, grass or mushrooms on second thought: no problem.

Improbable? Perhaps. But according to the Drug Policy Foundation - a drugs think tank consisting of politicians, scientists and other prominent people - a chain of government shops is the best way to control drugs.

It is best compared with the casinos, regulated, owned and controlled by the government, says Raimond Dufour, President of the Foundation.

The government is against gambling, but has started casinos in order to be able to control gambling. Thus drugs also must be fought: everyone wanting to use from time to time can do as he pleases, and when it gets out of hand, you get a visit by someone asking whether everything is still okay.

More and more national and international specialists plead for radical change of the worldwide policy on drugs, which is now aimed on the total destruction of drug production and a hard treatment of users.

That war on drugs can never be won, state the proponents of legalization. In the previous decades governments worldwide spent thousands of billions of dollars fighting drugs - without results. The number of drug consumers is still rising, the amount of produced drugs also, and there is an unprecedented quantity of money circulating in it. After the oil market the drug market is meanwhile the largest in the world.

From figures of the Dutch national drug monitor it becomes clear that contraveners of the Opium Act in the Netherlands account for 16 per cent of all prison sentences. They account for more than one quarter of the total spent prison time, but in reality drug crime is even much higher.

A drug addict who steals regularly, does so in order to be able to pay for his drugs, but he is entered into the books as a perfectly ordinary robber. How large the proportion of drugs related crime really is, remains unclear. Experts value that at least half of all condemnations in the Netherlands are related to narcotic substances.

Peter Paul Lampe - then president of the criminal court in Maastricht - already pleaded in 2004, for a smoother policy on drugs. îThe fight against drugs brings our complete criminal and sentencing system down. For many other affairs , which we necessarily must prosecute, no time is left. This includes heavy offences and crimes. So lets stop, legalize it now. I think that we must recognize that drugs, exactly like alcohol, can not be fought with criminal law.

Lampe is followed and cited more and more. A Amsterdam police officer who does not wants his name revealed in the newspaper, tells us how discouraged he gets from the endless problem around dealers and junkies. If you are willing to so you can spend the entire day on it. You fine them one day and know that the day after they will be there again. Utterly demotivating.

According to the police union ACP a large part of the police officers think along this line. The police knows that this method does not provides for any solution, says Gerrit van der Kamp, President of the police union ACP. It costs an enormous amount of time, a lot of money, and what does it produce? It is mopping with the tap wide open.

Theo de Roos, professor of criminal law, lawyer and judge, states that the majority of judges and head commissioners meanwhile support legalization or control of the drug market is. The treatment is way more terrible than the disease.

Because not the drugs themselves produce the largest problems, it is prohibition itself. Drug deaths are caused because the quality of narcotic substances cannot be checked in an illegal market.

Drug addicts must steal a fortune in order to be able to pay for the towering prices of their drugs - a price which would be a lot of lower if production and transport would be legal. In the meantime organized crime profits optimally. Former ñ chief commissioner Eric Nordholt: That drug money falls into the hands of criminals, who than can deal with it as they please. In fact in this way we are creating and facilitating a large part of the criminal organizations ourselves.

Nevertheless a plea for legalization of all types drugs is still a large taboo. Professor de Roos: *Probably a large scandal is required for this subject to be discussed realistically. A large mortality under drug addicts for example, who digest uncontrolled drugs and as a result, die.

Patience is required, but I am convinced: within thirty, forty, fifty years we have another policy on drugs."