...the Dutch soft drug policy?
Dutch municipalities can choose to tolerate one or more coffee shops or to conduct a zero-tolerance policy (coffee shops not permitted within municipal borders under any circumstances). The reality shows that tolerating soft drugs has converted into publicly allowing soft drugs, under the condition that the selling agency follows the AHOJ-G criteria - no hard drugs, no nuisance, no sale to or admission of minors (age limit: 18 years) and no sale of large quantities (maximum of 5 grams per transaction).
De Hoop considers tolerating soft drugs to be a wrong signal because soft drugs are harmful.
Physical harm:
- Damage to air ways and lungs.
- Carcinogenic substances (the effects of smoking joints for a month equal the effects of smoking cigarettes for a year).
- A decreased defence system against bacteria in the lungs after smoking cannabis.
Psychological harm:
- Underlying problems could surface in a more severe form, such as psychoses.
- Fears could become uncontrollable.
- Insecurity could convert into morbid paranoia.
- Flipping.
- Listlessness, apathy.
- Psychiatric clinical conditions could become more serious or begin to materialise.
- It could cause addiction.
- Long-term use could negatively alter the user's personality.
Social harm:
- Soft drug users 55 per cent more often cause industrial accidents than non-users.
- Soft drug users are 85 per cent more often absent from work or school due to illness.
- The school results of soft drug users often deteriorate.
- As from the implementation of the tolerance policy in The Netherlands, the use of soft drugs has dramatically increased. Therefore, the Dutch government should indicate that drug use and addiction are forms of unacceptable social behaviour.
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