U.S. URGES DUTCH TO TOUGHEN DRUG POLICY

AMSTERDAM - The United States' anti-drug chief and a Dutch police commander
were touring Amsterdam's red-light district recently when a man approached
the U.S. law enforcement delegation. "Ecstasy? Viagra? Cocaina?" he
whispered to a Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman. The Dutch cop
shrugged. DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson grimaced. Drug dealers are bold
here. Drugs, especially the club drug Ecstasy, are cheap and plentiful.
Dutch police mostly look the other way, preferring to focus on property
crimes and public nuisances.

It's added up to a 100 million-pill-a-year problem for the USA, where
authorities have become increasingly frustrated at how the Netherlands'
laissez faire approach to drug enforcement has allowed Ecstasy labs to
flourish here.

The Netherlands has become the dominant supplier of the synthetic
hallucinogenic drug that has exploded in popularity among U.S. teens and
young adults. U.S. officials say about 80% of the 2 million Ecstasy pills
flowing into the USA each week are manufactured on Dutch soil. U.S. Customs
officers stationed in New York City-area airports, the most popular Ecstasy
smuggling hubs, say they can make a bust every other day just by targeting
passengers from flights that have passed through the Netherlands.

The percentage of teens in the USA who use Ecstasy has more than doubled
since 1995, a survey last year by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America
showed. In a nationwide survey of 6,937 youths ages 12-18, 12% said they
had used Ecstasy, up from 5% in 1995. It ranks behind only alcohol and
marijuana in teen popularity.

U.S. law enforcement officials want the Dutch to become less hospitable to
Ecstasy's manufacturers and smugglers, but they have little power to make
that happen. The Netherlands is a wealthy ally that cannot be pushed into
tougher drug enforcement with the promise of U.S. aid or the threat of
sanctions. Instead, U.S. officials are trying to politely persuade the
Dutch to see it their way.

Hutchinson, who visited the Netherlands for two days in June, hopes a more
conservative Dutch parliament elected May 15 and increasing pressure from
less permissive members of the European Union will prompt the Dutch to
pursue dealers and manufacturers more aggressively.

The Dutch have made significant busts since creating a synthetic-drug law
enforcement division in 1997. In 2000, Dutch authorities dismantled 23
Ecstasy labs, the U.S. State Department says. Dutch officials say they
intend to close more Ecstasy labs with five new anti-drug squads. The Dutch
parliament recently approved a five-year, $35 million program aimed at
reducing the Ecstasy supply, and the Dutch justice minister has suggested a
registration system for pillmaking machines.

U.S. officials appreciate the moves. But they say the Netherlands'
underlying tolerance of drugs undermines the crackdowns. Penalties for
dealing and manufacturing drugs are not stiff enough to discourage it, they
say.

"They have a permissive drug policy that has a natural way of attracting
those who want to engage in illegal behavior, and they have a weak law
enforcement structure," Hutchinson says.

Ecstasy is illegal in the Netherlands. The Dutch, however, regard drug use
primarily as a health issue rather than as a crime problem, so they focus
their efforts on preventing drug use rather than law enforcement. Licensed
shops in the Netherlands sell marijuana for individual use, and the
government provides free needles and clean rooms where heroin addicts can
shoot up. Addicts who become a nuisance are steered toward treatment. The
large-scale dealers and manufacturers who are prosecuted rarely spend more
than a year or two in prison.

Dutch officials, when challenged on their priorities, refer to an
insatiable U.S. demand for drugs. "What we are doing is fighting some basic
rules of an economic market," says Steven van Hoogstraten, former director
of drugs policy at the Dutch Justice Ministry. Manufacturers want to
smuggle drugs to the market willing to pay the highest price, he says,
alluding to the USA's black market.

An Ecstasy pill typically sells for about 50 cents wholesale and $7 retail
in the Netherlands; it brings about $15 in the typical U.S. nightclub. Drug
prices in the Netherlands are the lowest in Western Europe, the United
Nations Office for Drug Control Policy says.

The Dutch police report that 40% of the Ecstasy they seized in 1999, about
1.5 million of 3.7 million tablets, was destined for the USA. Police data
indicate that 8.1 million Ecstasy tablets seized worldwide in 2000 could be
traced to the Netherlands, a State Department report says.

Manufacturers in the Netherlands usually buy used pill presses from Asia,
particularly India and Thailand. They import the chemicals from China, the
largest producer of chemicals used to make Ecstasy. The Chinese say they
produce the chemicals for making perfume, Dutch officials say.

"There is no legitimate use for the chemical" in the Netherlands, says
David Borah, the DEA attache based in The Hague. "So we know it's being
used to make Ecstasy."

Many smugglers who bring chemicals into the Netherlands find cover at
Rotterdam's port, the world's busiest. About 40% of the 6.5 million
containers that pass through the port each year contain chemicals. Loose
European borders mean that smugglers can bring the chemicals and pill
presses from Eastern Europe in tractor-trailers with little risk of inspection.

Dutch customs officials X-ray 25,000 to 30,000 containers a year, less than
1% of the 6.5 million containers that pass through Rotterdam each year.
They say they usually need advance intelligence and luck to find Ecstasy
pills in containers the size of railroad cars.

"Try to find a bag of 10,000 pills in a 40-foot container of tomatoes,"
says Kees Visscher of Dutch customs.