PRESSURE TO REFORM DUTCH DRUG LAWS AS GANG VIOLENCE GROWS

By the time the shooting ended, the A73 south of Nijmegan was
littered with bullet casings, and one man lay dead in his car with
another sprawled wounded in the passenger seat.

The survivor refused to talk to police, even though a hired assassin
had pursued his vehicle shooting at it without hitting for several
miles before finally catching up and riddling it with automatic fire.

Commuters were horrified, but the murder in September was wearily
familiar to detectives who have dealt with 25 gangland-style
killings in suburban southern Holland over the past three years.

As usual, there was a cannabis connection. The assassin was a hired
Bulgarian and his two victims, men in their twenties, had been
involved with one of the thousands of cannabis "nurseries" which
flourish out of sight in the attics, sheds and spare rooms of small
towns - using Dutch horticultural expertise honed from years of
growing tomatoes and tulips.

Billions of euros worth of cannabis is grown for export - much of it
to Britain - in Holland's modern cannabis industry, which has come a
long way since the days of penniless hippies growing pot on
Amsterdam houseboats and opening "coffee shops" where stoners could
happily puff away in an atmosphere of dope haze, peace and love.

Now there is so much money and violence involved that Holland's
police commissioner responsible for cannabis calls it a danger to
Dutch society.

Since he started his job a year ago Max Daniel has made it his
mission to change Holland's laid-back view of the drug, and as calls
mount from politicians and citizens to shut "nuisance" coffee shops
he believes that his message is getting through.

Mr Daniel said: "For years this was seen as an innocent business and
the tolerant Dutch approach was undoubtedly a successful form of
harm reduction - it kept users away from hard drugs.

"But now there is so much money to be made that cannabis is sucking
in organised crime gangs from abroad and corrupting legitimate
businesspeople - especially lawyers, estate agents and bankers.
Money laundering is a massive enterprise, and it is
bringing together white-collar professionals and the kind
of criminals who deal with heroin, prostitutes and people-smuggling.

"Cannabis is a threat to our democracy."

Mr Daniel said police noticed that the business was starting to
change about 15 years ago when criminals realised there were bigger
profits from growing cannabis in Holland than smuggling it from
Morocco, but the violence has become much worse in the past few years.

Dutch police believe that the underground cannabis growing cottage
industry has now become one of their nation's biggest earners of
foreign currency, worth an estimated 2.7 billion euros (#2.3
billion) in total - about half as much as Holland's
legitimate horticultural business.

The public perception has not kept up with the worsening
criminality; most Dutch still regard cannabis as harmless, if not
quite respectable. A nationwide poll in November found that 80 per
cent of Dutch people opposed the closure of marijuana coffee shops.

The nation's 730 coffee shops, where customers can buy herbal
cannabis or hashish without fear of arrest, attract tourists and pay
more than 300 million euros in tax annually.

An estimated 40 per cent of the cannabis grown in Holland is sold in
them. Police believe some are fronts for organised crime, but the
worst of the violence takes place in the cannabis-growing industry
where strong-arm gangs prey on novices who think they can make easy
money by setting up cannabis farms.

Everything needed can be bought in a "grow shop" - seeds, nutrients,
powerful lights and hydration systems. Police say some grow shops
sell the addresses of novices to criminal gangs, who months later
smash their way in and steal crops or cash.

Cannabis growers can't go to the law for protection, so they arm
themselves, electrify doors to shock or electrocute, or buy large
dogs for protection. In one case police discovered a trap for
intruders, in the form of a pit filled with sharpened stakes dug
beneath a doormat. Suburban Holland has never seen anything like it.

Public anger about tolerant drugs laws is mounting along the French
and Belgian borders, where rows of coffee shops sell to thousands of
drugs tourists every week. They are accused of making a nuisance in
the placid and law-abiding small towns.

This month Amsterdam's civic fathers decided to shut 43 of the
city's 228 coffee shops as they were close to schools, another sign
of growing anxiety about the city's laid-back drugs laws.

So far coffee shop owners have been remarkably relaxed in the face
of the growing campaign against them.

"Every few years we hear about how they are going to close us down
and about what a threat we are to the nation's morals," said Michael
Veling, sitting in a fug of potent cannabis smoke inside his "420"
coffee shop on the edge of Amsterdam's red light district.

He dismissed the increasingly vociferous police warnings about
organised crime as "scaremongering" and accused the politicians of
pandering to a small Christian party which is now part of Holland's
ruling coalition.

Mr Veling, a clean-shaven 53 year-old who is head of the coffee shop
owners' association, makes an unlikely drugs dealer.

He described himself as bourgeois and pointed out that he paid
income tax at Holland's top 52 per cent rate. He insisted that he
provided a valued service, not least to the hordes of young English
visitors who boost Amsterdam's economy when they stream in every weekend.

At the bar, customers were offered a range of different cannabis
products, which since last year cannot be mixed with tobacco which
it is now illegal to smoke in public places.

The coffee shop's resident expert, Steven Pratt, a long-haired
32-year-old from Stourbridge, advised customers in the manner of a
wine waiter that one brand gave a euphoric high, while smoking
another ensured what he described as "a more traditional 'stoned' effect".

His patrons included a mournful-looking Dutch pensioner in a leather
jacket who smoked alone at the bar, and a group of rowdy young
Italians who couldn't stop giggling.

The police routinely call by to check the scales used to measure
cannabis and make sure that no hard drugs are sold.

Last year Amsterdam's policemen were urged by their bosses not to
smoke dope in the coffee shops during their time off.

Michelle Martin, 36, an IT worker from Liverpool, was enjoying a
joint with her friend Lee Jones, 33, from South Africa in the 420.

"It's not sleazy, it's just a fun place to come and relax and meet
people," she said. "I feel safer walking back from here than I do in
Liverpool, and I've never seen any signs of organised crime in
Amsterdam. Surely closing the coffee shops and forcing cannabis
underground would help criminals take over this business?"