DOING DRUGS DUTCH STYLE

WITHIN half an hour of arriving in Amsterdam, I've been offered sex,
cocaine and ecstasy. It makes me think the critics are right about the
effects of Amsterdam's soft drugs policies. But after three days of talking
to the police, the "coffee shop" owners, treatment clinics and locals, I'm
convinced that the approach is doing more good than harm.

The coffee shops began selling marijuana as early as 1976, and today there
are about 900 such shops. Roel Kerssemakers, who works for the state-run
Jellinek drug-abuse clinic, says this hasn't increased the number of
smokers. "The forbidden-fruit effect is gone," says Kerssemakers. "There's
very little peer pressure to smoke."

More importantly, the shops seem to have been fairly effective at
separating soft-drug users from dealers who peddle harder drugs. "Coffee
shops are the most hard-drug-free places in town," laughs Kerssemakers,
thanks to regular visits from the police.

And most smokers seem content to try cannabis in their youth and then give
up drugs completely. "Cocaine and ecstasy have more to do with nightclubs
than with cannabis," Kerssemakers says. Police officers on the street
agree. They say that the dealers I encountered are small-timers who target
tourists rather than locals.

But recent changes in the drugs policy may have unintentionally jeopardised
the separation between dope and harder drugs. In 1996, coffee shops were
banned from selling to anyone under 18, which has "thrown a big vulnerable
group onto the street", says Arjan Roskam, head of a union for coffee-shop
owners.

While the amendment was intended to delay the age at which teenagers start
experimenting with drugs, it has probably only diverted users to less
regulated sources. According to the Trimbos Institute, a mental health and
addiction centre in Utrecht, about 10 per cent of under-age smokers now buy
from criminal suppliers.

The government also increased the penalty for growing marijuana from two
years to four, discouraging smaller growing operations. "Now the crooks are
in again," says Roskam. I think it would be better if it were all legal."

He may have his wish. "There's a majority in parliament who are for
legalising it, on the condition that we don't do it alone," says
Kerssemakers. "If other big countries decide to, we would follow."

Nicola Jones, Amsterdam