Cannabis in Holland
- 2018 Dutch prisons are so empty they're being ...: The Netherland's low incarceration rates are largely thanks to relaxed drug laws, a focus on rehabilitation and an electronic ankle monitor ...Dutch prisons are emptying fast. The number of prisoners in the Netherlands fell from 20,463 in 2006 to 10,102 in 2016. - This is equal to about 59 prisoners per 100,000 population, according to data from the World Prison Brief. In comparison, the United States, which has the world’s highest incarceration rate, has 666 prisoners per 100,000 population, or a total of more than 2.1 million inmates. - The Netherland’s low incarceration rates are largely thanks to relaxed drug laws, a focus on rehabilitation and an electronic ankle monitor system. - These measures have resulted in the closure of multiple prisons across the country in recent years, including Bijlmerbajes in Amsterdam, which was shut down in 2016. - The site is scheduled to be demolished and converted into housing this year, but in the meantime it has been transformed into a creative hub called Lola Lik, which includes space for start-ups, a language school and a coffee shop.
- Dutch Prison System 1987 In the 1970s: lower than 30 per 100 000. 1980s: 30-35 per 100.000. 2006: wohl rund 120 per 100 000. 2016: 59 per 100.000.
- As of April 2018: 573 coffee shops in 103 of a total of 380 municipalities in NL. Amid growing concern over public cannabis smoking and disorder, The Hague introduced a ban on pot smoking in much of the city center to be sanctioned by fines.
- As the Guardian reported, the notion has occurred to “at least 30 companies,” all of whom have expressed interest in producing marijuana for coffeeshops with official government approval. Beginning this year, as many as 10 regional governments in the Netherlands will experiment with regulated marijuana production. They’ll then report back to the central government, which may recommend widespread adoption of regulated domestic cannabis cultivation. About two dozen cities have leaped at the chance to enter the marijuana space and are floating various plans. They include allowing companies and medical firms to produce cannabis, eliminating coffeeshops altogether and allowing customers to buy weed online, adopting a model similar to first-generation medical cannabis clubs seen in the United States and leaving production to coffeeshop “members” — or leaving production up to the coffeeshops themselves. While the country still stands mostly alone in allowing adults to purchase cannabis without worry of arrest, the Netherlands’ experiment with marijuana is in line with other countries. In Italy, medical marijuana patients can access cannabis grown for them by the military. In Switzerland, cannabis users can patronize storefronts that take advantage of a loophole in that country’s law that legalizes the production, use and sale of low-THC, high-CBD cannabis. Moving to a legitimate supply model would seem to be the natural progression for Dutch cannabis cafe culture — and once adopted, a move that will leave most observers wondering what took so long.
- The Dutch Senate has recently approved the so-called Grow Shop Law, a new regulation that will enter into force on 1 March 2015, designed to increase repression on consumers, growers and shop owners who distribute growing gear and marijuana seeds, applying jail sentences of up to 3 years. - This new law comes from the VVD Liberal Party, a business-orientated and centre-right group that forms the Government with the PvdA Labour Party, a social-democratic group which has opposed the measure, but cannot fight the majority of the former. - This law arises as another nail in the coffin of what freedom of recreational and medical cannabis used to be in the Netherlands. Although it seems to be difficult to implement it, it will definitely change things in the country, particularly in Amsterdam. - By contrast, local governments from different cities have decided to challenge the devastating policies of Ivo Opstelten, Minister of Security and Justice in the Netherlands, who is on a personal crusade against coffee shops and marijuana users, and is the promoter of WeedPass. A total of 54 mayors have signed a manifesto called “Common Regulations“, which advocates decriminalisation of the “backdoor problem of coffee shops”.
Scheerer & Valois 2017: In the Netherlands, any adult may cultivate up to six cannabis plants for his own use. The sale of cannabis is "illegal, but not punishable". The law is not enforced as long as coffee shops keep a distance of at least 250 meters from the next school and as long as they follow the rules of (1) no advertising, (2) no sale or tolerance of hard drugs on the premises, (3) no sale to anyone under the age of 18, (4) no noise or other disturbances of the peace, (5) no sale of more than 5g to each customer and no storage of more than 500g on the premises. Municipalities have the right to decide if they want to tolerate one or more coffee shops within their boundaries, and they have also the right to prohibit the sale of cannabis to tourists. Any coffee shop that violates rules can either be closed for a limited time (three to six months) or permanently.
The idea of licensing was adopted on the basis of recommendations stressing the relatively acceptable risks associated with cannabis and the advantages that licensing would have in terms of keeping hard and soft drugs separated.
The result of the de facto legalization of cannabis in Holland was an increase in availability of cannabis, but – interestingly – no corresponding increase of consumption. At a time when cannabis was intensively prosecuted in the USA, but de facto legalized in the Netherlands, a comparison of life-time cannabis prevalence rates (15-64 years) showed higher rates of people who reported cannabis use at least once in their life-time in the USA (41.5%) than in Holland (25.7%).
The legal basis of the coffee shop system is a distinction between the law in the books and the law in action. According to the Dutch opium law of 1976 cannabis possession still remains a crime, but the expediency principle - according to which an repressive intervention is not an automatic response to illegality – enabled the Ministry of Justice to assign the lowest prosecutorial priority to offenses in the sphere of cannabis consumption. The somewhat sophistic argument that international treaties just demand criminalization, but do not say anything concerning actual enforcement “stretched the flexibility within the conventions to their very limits” (185). There was, e.g., a detailed plan to iron out the legal inconsistency that is the illegal “backdoor” supply of the coffee shops. This plan under the name “Coffeeshops out of the Shadow” (1998) proposed to extend the licensing system to growers who would supply coffee shops with cannabis subject to quality control and taxation. In turn, shop owners would oblige themselves to buy from licensed growers only, thus separating the coffee shop scene from international trafficking and bringing it into the sphere of legal commerce. This plan had no chance in view of the opposition of both the USA and the UN drug policy institutions (186 f.). Consequently, the international prohibition regime forces the unique Dutch system of regulated quasi-legal cannabis sales supplied by illegal importers and growers to remain inherently fragile and vulnerable.