CHAPTER 7 THE NETHERLANDS

The decision to appoint a state committee was made by the under-
secretary of state for the Department of Health and the Minister of
Justice on the initiative of the Lord Mayor of Amsterdam.49 It was to
study three aspects of the drug problem. First, the causes of the
increased use of narcotic drugs and other substances like amphetamines
and hallucinogens. Secondly, how irresponsible use could be
counteracted by tracing illegal trade, efficiently tracing and approaching
drug users, and information on the dangers of drug use to the general
population as well as persons who professionally encountered these
substances. Thirdly, the appropriate medical-social treatment of persons
who were addicted to such substances (Blom 1998: 78).
The Baan Committee50 started in October 1968 with two
representatives from the department of Social Affairs and Public
Health 51 (medical profession), four from the Department of Justice
(jurists) including the secretary, one from the forensic laboratory and
two from the City of Amsterdam (prosecutor, police commissioner).
The chairman was Chief Inspector of the Public Mental Health section
within the Department of Health. Eventually the committee concluded
that it lacked professional expertise especially concerning how to
approach users (Baan Report 1972: viii). In February 1970, the
committee was extended with sociologists, psychiatrists, professionals
from treatment of drug users, and officials from the department of
Social Work (CRM). Baan, head of the section Chief Inspectorate of
Public Mental Health within the Department of Health, became the new
chairman. Altogether, the committee comprised 15 members. The
committee's report "The Backgrounds and Risks of Drug Use" came in
spring 1972. The committee was in office from October 1968 until
February 1972.

Troubles

While the Baan Committee was at work, everyday life went on in
departments and in the cities. There, as well as in other parts of society,
the drug issue was subject of debates. The main issue was whether a
distinction could be made between cannabis and other drugs. A
development that speeded up discussions was cannabis smoking in
youth clubs in Amsterdam.
During 1969, police intervention against cannabis users in youth
centres became a hot item during 1969 and later. Especially two youth
clubs in Amsterdam, Paradiso and Fantasio, became the focus of
publicity. These clubs attracted 1500­2000 regular visitors, about 150­
400 smoked cannabis, and some of them used hard drugs (HIG Archive,
21 no. 144186). Ironically, Paradiso was located in a former Protestant
church, wall-to-wall to a house of detention and just 150 metres from
the nearest police station, all symbols of authority. On several
occasions, the police raided the clubs. The staffs protested and stated
that a better strategy would be to tolerate smoking cannabis and
concentrate on use of and trade in hard drugs instead. The board of the
foundation that ran the clubs publicly backed up the staffs. A clash had
occurred between two professional fields, the police and prosecutors
who were trying to enforce the Opium Act and youth workers who
wanted to protect their clients both from the police and from the use of
hard drugs. The situation caused vehement discussions in Amsterdam
and between city officials and departments. Authorities were facing a
dilemma. Prohibiting smoking of cannabis in youth clubs or closing
them down would certainly mean that cannabis would spread to other
parts of the city and definitely get out of control. However, tolerating
cannabis smoking would mean stimulating people to break the law. The
dilemma could not be solved on the local level. As the Lord Mayor
Samkalden stated, it was not a matter of maintaining public order by
calling more police but a matter of justice policy (Meeting, Amsterdam
City Council, 22 January 1969, 21 no. 144186, HIG Archive). As long
as cannabis was prohibited by the Opium Act, it could not be tolerated.
Changing the Opium Act was a matter for the government, not the local
authorities. In the mean time, however, it would be possible to develop
a differentiated prosecution policy that concentrated on drug dealers.
This policy could be worked out together with all actors involved, such
as the prosecutor, police commissioner, assistance, the youth clubs, etc.
(Gemeenteblad afd. 2A, 23 January 1969, HIG).

Interdepartmental struggle

A hampering factor in the elaboration of a drug policy was that
dissenting opinions existed on the cannabis issue among members of
the governmental policy domain. The most important actors in that
domain will be described below.
The Department of Justice was involved in the drug problem by its
responsibility to execute the Opium Act. Important sections in the
department were the Council for Prosecution (OM), the chief section
for penal law, the section for probation, and the directorates for police
and for correctional treatment.52 Within the Department of Health, three
sections were involved in drug matters. The section Chief Inspectorate
of Medicines was responsible for supervising that regulations
originating from international treaties were observed and implemented.
The Chief Inspectorate of Public Mental Health (headed by Baan) was
responsible for public mental health, e.g. psychiatry and medical
assistance to alcoholics and drug users. A third section, the Chief
Inspectorate of Public Health, was responsible for youth health.
While the Department of Justice and the Department of Health
traditionally had been the main actors in drug issues, a third department
eventually entered the drug policymaking domain. In 1965, a
Department for Culture, Recreation, and Social Work (CRM) had been
established that became involved in drug policy issues because of its
direct involvement in youth clubs and subsiding non-medical assistance
to youth.
The three departments had to prepare a standpoint on drug policy that
was acceptable to their ministers. According to CRM, prohibition of
cannabis smoking in the youth clubs was no option. It would mean
throwing out the youngsters into the streets while they instead needed
contact with youth workers. In June 1970 the Council of Social-Cultural
Youth Work within the Department of Culture, Recreation and Social
Work (CRM) published its findings on the drug problem. The council
proposed four types of measures, of which two concerned the issue of
police actions against youth clubs. Cannabis products should be lifted
out of the Opium Act and placed in a separate legislation that regulated
the use of these products in a similar way to alcohol. Before
proclaiming such a regulation, it should be tried out at a limited number
of selling sites (Raad voor de Jeugdvorming 1970 CRM). The Minister
of CRM stated that she did not support the conclusions of the Council
for Social-Cultural Youth Work in June but that on the other hand penal
law could not solve the problem by itself (Ministerial meeting, 8
October 1970).
According to the Minister of Justice and his department, penal law
was unsuitable to keep cannabis users from using cannabis, and
disparate approaches were proposed for cannabis and other drugs.
Justice had applied the Opium Act as stipulated by the Single
Convention and in a very short period of time the number of drug
offences (mainly for cannabis) was multiplied, from 74 cases in 1966 to
1078 in 1970 (Blom 1998:77). This distinction was totally rejected by
the under-secretary of state for health, who held the view that no
distinction could be made between cannabis and other drugs and the
ruling Opium Act should be applied.
When departmental discussions proved fruitless the Minister of
Justice, Polak invited the Ministers of Health, CRM, Home Affairs, and
Education to a meeting on 8 October 1970 (22 September 1970. R
37/70/2). The Minister of Justice emphasised that his department was
only concerned with maintaining the rules of prohibition. As long as
prohibition was based on and supported by knowledge, discussions of
principle about the values of the norms for maintaining the law could be
avoided. This was clearly not the case; on the contrary, the Opium Act
was seriously questioned and prosecutors and police became involved
in policy discussions. The credibility of the Opium Act was at stake and
the validity of the law lay in this case in the terrain of the Department of
Health. As an example of the diminished credibility of law provisions
concerning cannabis, the Minister of Justice referred to a case in 1970
in which the court sentenced cannabis users for dealing in hash to a
(symbolic) fine of 50 cents (Ibid.).
Another problem was that it seemed to be difficult to comply with
the guidelines in the court districts. In the first national guidelines for
prosecution in March 1969, a distinction was made between the
prosecution of incidental and regular users of soft drugs and dealers in
soft drugs. Users of hard drugs should be taken into custody and
referred to treatment. For dealers of both soft and hard drugs
imprisonment would be called for. Another basic standpoint in the
guidelines on the prosecution of users is worth quoting: "Action by
penal law concerning the drug matter has to preserve the character of an
ultimum remedium; in the first instance, the policy in this matter ought
to be pursued by the Departments of Health and Social Work" (March
1969. A67/336A I).53
Some factors that interfered with consistent compliance with the
guidelines were:
· the massiveness of violations especially concerning the use of
cannabis products.
· diverging value judgements of experts.
· problems concerning penal law in relation to assistance to addicts.
· the important complication of offences being committed in youth
clubs that were subsidised by the government.
· Another problem was pop festivals where large-scale drug use was
known to take place (Ibid.).54

Another example of the discordant atmosphere surrounding the issue
of drugs at the governmental level was the way a television interview
with the under-secretary of state for Health, Dr Kruisinga, was
discussed. His statements came in advance of a statement from the
government, a fact his colleagues criticised him for. Especially his
assertion that there was absolutely no reason to treat cannabis
differently from other drugs created room for critics to play off
departments against one another (Ministerial meeting, 8 October 1970).
At the same time, the Baan Committee was at work, leaving the
government little room to manoeuvre. The Baan Committee also
criticised on the statement by Dr Kruisinga, wondering if it was still
meaningful to finish the report (de Kort 1995: 194).
Further, the issue of information was extensively discussed at the
meeting. The under-secretary of state for education stated that the more
repressive the prosecution policy, the more difficult education on drugs
would be. It would disturb the atmosphere of confidence in which
young people were informed about the detrimental effects of drug use.
Discussing the issue of information to the public, the Minister of Home
Affairs mentioned that broad education could cause a boomerang effect
because it implied that proponents of drug use also should be allowed to
speak. The Minister of Justice and the under-secretary of state for
health also feared that information most often would come from the
wrong side and stimulated use of cannabis, which could be even more
dangerous than no information at all (Ministerial meeting, 8 October
1970).
The ministers could not decide on a common standpoint but more or
less agreed on some aspects of the drug problem. It was decided that if
questions were asked the government should answer:

· prosecution was already subtle with a differentiation between dealer and user.
The law did not need to be changed for this purpose.
· information about the dangers of drug use was of great importance and would
be promoted forcefully by the government.
· for the majority of regular drug use, soft or hard drugs, one could speak of a
disease that required treatment (Ibid.).

In summary, the situation for the government was this: Justice had
problems in maintaining the Opium Act, especially concerning
cannabis, and advocated a distinction between prosecuting cannabis and
other drugs. Health demanded that the Opium Act should be fully
enforced, and CRM, confronted with youth smoking cannabis in clubs
subsidised by CRM, tried to keep at least drug dealers outside.


A delicate assignment

The Baan Committee faced a complicated task. Like the Swedish
committee, it had to analyse the drug situation and recommend actions
in the fields of legislation, assistance, and prevention. However, there
was more. The committee was also to outline principles for a drug
policy that would be acceptable to all sections of the policy domain.
Against this background, it is not surprising that the findings of the
Baan Committee are still considered a cornerstone of the Dutch drug
policy. So, what were the findings?


49 Samkalden, Minister of Justice 1965/66 and successor of the Lord Mayor van
Hall of Amsterdam, who had failed to maintain local public order, which in the
Netherlands is a responsibility of the Lord Mayor.
50 The official name was "Working Group on Narcotic Drugs" but the committee is
commonly referred to as the "Baan Committee" after its chairman Baan.
51 The Department of Health has been located within different departments and
changed its name during the period of this study. For the convenience of the reader,
I use the term Department of Health throughout the study.
52 The department also financed probation and treatment of alcohol and drug-using
offenders that since 1915 had been carried out by CBs (Consultations Bureaux).
53 All references to letters, meetings, etc can be found in the ISD archive unless
indicated otherwise.
54 In June 1970, a pop festival was held in the forest of Kralingen, near Rotterdam.
A team of police officers did not interfere in drug taking and dealing but observed
the crowd instead (de Kort 1995: 182).