U.S. AND NETHERLANDS REACH ACCORD ON CUTTING DRUG USE

On July 9, 1998, Barry R. McCaffrey, then the White House drug policy
director, fired an opening salvo against the Dutch, declaring that
drug-fighting policies in the Netherlands were "an unmitigated disaster."

Eleven days later, after a maelstrom of criticism in the Netherlands,
McCaffrey acknowledged he may have overstepped. On reflection, he
said, the policy was a "mitigated disaster."

But the flood gates had opened, and the Bush administration has been
waging a public battle with Dutch authorities over their permissive
approach to drugs, criticizing cannabis cafes that target foreigners
and ecstasy factories supplying drugs to Americans.

In 2000, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration called the
Netherlands "perhaps the most important drug trafficking and
transiting area in Europe," and last year McCaffrey's successor, John
P. Walters, called the country's policies "fundamentally irrational."

But last Thursday there was a limited rapprochement. Standing
together at the National Press Club, Walters and Hans Hoogervorst,
the Netherlands' health secretary, announced they had signed an
agreement for reducing drug use. In an instant, seven years of
acrimony was history amid handshakes, smiles and warm words.

"What an entertaining pairing," said Peter Reuter, a drug policy
expert at the University of Maryland, who said he was surprised by
the move. Although there has been closer cooperation since 2003 with
a bilateral program known as "Agreed Steps," President Bush said in
his most recent annual report to Congress that the Netherlands
remained a "dominant source country" for "club drugs."

The reason for the sudden love-in? The administration drug chief and
his new best friend had bonded over a new high-potency form of
marijuana, known as THC, because of its psychoactive ingredient
delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol.

"The conventional, or cartoon, view of our two countries is that the
United States is irresponsibly harsh and the Dutch are irresponsibly
permissive and we are anti-poles of how you handle drugs," Walters said Friday.

"But on a visit to Holland earlier this year, I was struck by how
much commonality there was over the issue of marijuana THC and
high-potency cannabis," he said. "Their research showed that 20
percent of homegrown marijuana was THC, and they were having
significantly greater problems with this. Dutch government agencies
have been saying this almost ought to be treated as a different drug."

Having identified an area on which they could work together, Walters
and Hoogervorst drew up a joint statement. The agreement paves the
way for a summit this fall between U.S. and Dutch researchers,
information sharing between drug addiction experts and the assignment
of a Dutch researcher to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

"Does this represent any major change? The answer is no. What's
significant is that both sides want to make peace," Reuter said. He
also said that despite the accord on high-potency cannabis, there has
been little action on the issues that so worried two successive U.S.
administrations, even from the right-of-center Dutch government.

"My understanding is that this government is more cautious than its
predecessor but has made no major changes to the law," Reuter said.
"It has slowed down the program to switch methadone to heroin and has
been under pressure to curb the use of cannabis coffee shops by
foreigners, but changes have been modest."

Walters agreed. "The law hasn't changed dramatically, and we still
have our differences. But I do think there's been both a change in
circumstances and a change in officials," he said.

Ivo H. Daalder, a senior analyst at the Brookings Institution,
cautioned not to overstate the role of drugs in the relationship
between the two countries.

"Drugs have been an irritant in the relationship, but hardly the
issue that defines it," Daalder said. "President Bush is more
interested in whether they have troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, which
they had until March. There are several issues like drug policy --
euthanasia, abortion and gay marriage, for instance -- where the two
sides disagree, but they quickly put them aside and get on with being
good allies."