Not only is cannabis not legal in the Netherlands (it's "illegal but tolerated"), but in recent years the conservative Dutch government has been successful in closing down a lot of coffeshops (ie. shops that sell cannabis).
The Dutch used to be a lot more tolerant in the past.
I was under the impression: it's legal to buy it, it's legal to own it, and if you're the proprietor of a hash bar, it's legal to sell it. It's legal to carry it, but if you get stopped by the cops in Amsterdam, it's illegal for them to search you.
Am I just misled for the last 25 years?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLIcFP0J5TY
JULES
– Okay now, tell me about the hash
bars?
VINCENT
What so you want to know?
JULES
Well, hash is legal there, right?
VINCENT
Yeah, it's legal, but is ain't a
hundred percent legal. I mean you
can't walk into a restaurant, roll a
joint, and start puffin' away. You're
only supposed to smoke in your home
or certain designated places.
JULES
Those are hash bars?
VINCENT
Yeah, it breaks down like this: it's
legal to buy it, it's legal to own
it and, if you're the proprietor of
a hash bar, it's legal to sell it.
It's legal to carry it, which doesn't
really matter 'cause – get a load of
this – if the cops stop you, it's
illegal for this to search you.
Searching you is a right that the
cops in Amsterdam don't have.
E.g., they aren't "out to get you" like police in America.
Once I was having lunch with some friends in a park and one of us was drinking a beer can. We were alone there and, certainly, not causing any problem. The police approached us and fined my friend for drinking in public (I don't remember how much it was, this was some years ago). I live in front of a park now and I've seen similar things. I've also been drinking many times in public without any problem, and I am quite sure the police noticed us.
The Netherlands is, in general, a very tolerant country, but not as much as some people think. Maybe it is compared with America (although, in my very limited experience, I've never had any problems with the American police), but the difference with most European countries is quite moot.
They kind of went the way of the Dodo when ticket prices started going up and theaters started converting to the lazy boy seats and offering similar experiences. Although the bar was usually outside of the theater and more of a "pre-gamne" type of experience than what the Cinema Grill offered.
We had around 8-10 of them where I lived, but AFAIK they're all gone now.
Last time my wife went to watch a movie (before covid) she ordered a margarita.
This would remove a lot of people form the criminal justice system and get rid of the need for the DEA. Only problem is that the DEA is a job creator though.
On the other hand those jobs include tearing families apart and jailing people for victimless crimes. I think I'd be ok losing those jobs.
The same would happen if we get rid of commercial insurance companies which I'm also in favor of. All those admin staff, drug sales, insurance coders would be out of work and politicians would have to explain what happened.
https://www.government.nl/topics/drugs/toleration-policy-reg...
Oregon also just decriminalized possession of all drugs, for personal-use quantities.
Seems to say it's illegal but tolerated as long as you don't cause a fuss.
And before that a lot less tolerant. And before THAT, a lot more tolerant. And back and forward, for many many years. Amsterdam has a rich history of going between liberal and more close minded, and will probably continue doing so.
They also banned psilocybin mushrooms (the fruiting body) vs. the mushroom body for some reason (legal as "truffles").
As a former Amsterdam resident, another thing that has increased a lot is drugs-tourism. It's a class of tourism no Amsterdammer is happy about (except the coffeeshopowners). The Amsterdam center is basically a no-go zone for many residents, it suffers from the usual European inner-city-tourism-blight, with a significant share of drunk and high tourists sprinkled on top. The city of Amsterdam already stopped their advertising campaign last year and wanted to improve the 'quality' of the tourists it is attracting: less poor backpacking weed-seekers, and more middle-class and rich-class art-seekers.
One vivid example from one of these articles that's stuck in my mind was an account of some drunk German tourists vomiting in some Dutch person's flower pot. I've also heard talk of drug tourists falling in to the canals, and some of them have been violent. Of course, many of the violent ones tend to be drunk on alcohol, but I don't hear many calls for Amsterdam's bars to close.
An uptick in crime was also blamed on organized crime being involved in the drug trade, though why the response to that wasn't to just legalize it completely, I don't know.
Mandating that coffeshops be no closer than 250 meters (820 feet) to a school to presumably keep teenagers from using cannabis was also a factor.
Traffic in Dutch cities was up, and that was also blamed on foreign drug tourists.
Blaming foreigners seems to be rather fashionable these days, and the oh-so-tolerant Netherlands is apparently not above doing so itself.
Here are some articles about coffeshop closings: [1], [2], [3], [4]
It's also important to keep in mind that there are the stated reasons for doing something, and then there are the real reasons. In the USA, for instance, the drug war had roots in racism and a backlash against the counterculture and anti-war movement, with which drugs were associated, but the stated reasons for making drugs illegal have to do with health. As has become clear to most people in respect to cannabis, the stated health reasons for making cannabis illegal were complete and utter BS.
I've heard that in recent decades the Netherlands has been ruled by (relatively) conservative Christians, so the real reason might have to do with a Christian moral disapproval of drugs, though of course in a country like the Netherlands which sees itself as very modern, enlightened, tolerant and cosmopolitan such archaic prohibitions could never be stated out in the open.
Another reason I've heard for cracking down on drugs is France supposedly putting pressure on the Netherlands after it joined the EU, and just the pressure to harmonize Netherlands' laws with the rest of Europe. Of course, such pressure has always been there, and the Netherlands has so far resisted to some extent, but maybe their resistance is flagging.
[1] - https://www.dutchamsterdam.nl/548-amsterdam-closing-coffeesh...
[2] - https://cannabisnow.com/closing-time-amsterdams-famous-coffe...
[3] - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/nethe...
[4] - https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2017/01/10/...
It's not like "hordes of tourists" were going to the Netherlands to do mushrooms. It's a very fringe, minority activity.
Many more tourists were smoking pot, but that's a pretty sedate, quiet activity limited to the confines of a coffeshop or someone's home.
By far the most numerous, annoying, and belligerent tourists are going to be the drunk ones, but the Netherlands did not crack down on alcohol consumption.
This is the most conspicuous thing about drug policy in most countries.
In particular it's conspicuous because alcohol (famously) impairs judgment of all other drug-decisions. The main premise of AA is that alcohol is the ultimate gateway drug and cause of relapses. (I don't endorse AA's literalism and AA's attitudes about cannabis border on a crime-against-humanity IMHO. They are so powerful and they have done, and continue to do, SO MUCH DAMAGE by maintaining that old garbage. Founder of AA was a psychonaut anyways. Sigh.)
I'm from an opiate-epidemic-plagued state. My family's been affected, every extended family has been affected, every close friend has been affected. (Affected like -- 1+ members of that/their family having severe addiction problems.)
And you know what's the most consistent factor in the relapses? Alcohol. It's there every time. This is anecdata of course but ... we are lacking hard data that can displace the anecdotes many of us have. Alcohol abuse is so widespread that we can't really control the variable (seemingly).
</rant>
@pmoriarty, I really, really appreciate your comments on this thread. Looking forward to the readings that come from the sources you've linked.
If you objectively listed ethanol's effects on paper without the name, people would clamor to ban it. Yet we all know how that went over. And the fact is societies largely coexist with it. It should be the poster child for how sensible drug legalization won't cause western civilization to crumble.
People were high, spaced out, suddenly worshipping a tree, or whatever, but none of them were loud, annoying or in the way. Not even the guy who had taken this drug (I'm not sure what kind) that makes your jaws go all tight, something that I associated with aggression, but he was having a great time and being nice.
When the weekend came, a different sort of people arrived, who did like to drink alcohol during the shows. And the difference was just huge.
Suddenly when there was groups of people standing around, some of them were yelling or seemingly unaware of their voice loudness. It was nothing bad of course, "normal" behaviour with alcohol, expected. But the contrast with people partying to their hearts' content, just without alcohol, was immense.
People were in the way, and stumbling around unpredictably. And I don't mean people that were very drunk, it was only half way the evening. It was just the aggregate effect of adding some ethanol/beer into a large crowd on a festival, but the difference was absolutely striking.
And then think about this crowd has been on all the other drugs in the days before, but then ethanol arrives, and the entire atmosphere on the festival just changes.
Cannabis is nothing like that. I mean just imagine the same situation a few days without and then with cannabis :) It wouldn't change hardly anything (especially if they had been consuming other stuff) and if anything, I expect an increase in giggles and quietness ...
It also reminded me that before that festival I had almost always been consuming cannabis and ethanol at the same time. I don't really do that any more.
The fact that they're is legal shops selling it suggests there is more nuance than your comment is providing.