Since the autumn of 1982, when the Deaconal Center was opened in the Pauluskerk, we have devoted ourselves to the care of drug users. We also help other marginal groups such as asylum-seekers who have been denied a residence permit. These people are left to fend for themselves and have no possibility of earning a living by legal means. The Pauluskerk offers them shelter and food, either in or outside the church, as well as legal aid. If all attempts to become legal fail, we help them on their way to try their luck elsewhere. We counsel sexual minority groups, such as pedophiles, transsexuals, transvestites, etc. The part we play consists of individual pastoral care, and support concerning emancipatory activities.

The Pauluskerk believes in action. It supports the so-called Derde Kamer movement. The Dutch Parliament, like the British, consists of two houses. The Third (derde) house is a critical movement that pleads the cause of all those groups that are being neglected by our politicians. Furthermore, the Pauluskerk organized ordinary church activities, such as divine services, Bible study groups, pastoral and deaconal care, discussion groups, etc.

The Pauluskerk has remained a church. It has developed along three lines: the church as a shelter, the church as a place for meditation and the church as a centre for action. From the very beginning we have cooperated with the local Junkiebond — an interest group of drug users. They were our guides in the drug scene. They taught us that assistance must begin there where people need it.

Man is a creature who has an urge for excitement. He wants to cross barriers in his search for happiness and fulfillment. Drugs enable people to deepen and expand their experiences and consciousness. Furthermore, drugs are seen as a means of healing and cure. In youth cultures drugs sometimes play a role on the road to adulthood. The youth explore, and feel an urge for sensuous experiences. Falling in love, experiencing sex and searching for fulfillment and intoxication are often interconnected. This is more than just hedonism: young people are also looking for something to hold onto. The reaction of parents is frequently one of panic, driven by fear. Kindled sexuality and the urge for intoxicants, more often than not, cause reactions of rejection by parents and educators.

Our philosophy on drugs is as follows: drugs are substances that influence the human consciousness. People and drugs go together. We distinguish between drugs that are more harmful and those that are less harmful. Offering clear information on the risks involved in the use of various drugs is of essential importance. It is the task of the government to develop a drug policy that is based on the risks involved. Potentially dangerous drugs are available only by prescription; on the free market it is difficult to get hold of them. Advertising harmful drugs is prohibited. The quality of drugs is state-controlled and the state levies a tax on the sales.

The ethics concerning drug use depend strongly on components such as the amount of risk to public health that is involved, and the reasons for the drug use. Drug use as such is not deplorable from an ethical point of view; note that Judaism and Christianity, both based on the Biblical tradition, do not oppose the use of a drug such as alcohol — the most dangerous drug in the history of the world — but they do forbid overindulgence. From an ethical standpoint, drug use becomes deplorable when the use has a devastating effect on the mental or physical health of people, and when using drugs serves as a false solution to deep and essential problems of a mental or social character. We therefore propagate a drug policy that is pragmatic and non-moralistic.

Tragically, though, drugs are always associated with the demonic and the evil. The moralism that is accompanied by criminalization is the biggest obstacle to a solution of the drug problem. Moralism obscures. It distorts reality. This moralization is one of the causes of the prohibition of some drugs. Through the rhetoric of prohibition, white people are made to feel threatened by black cocaine users; that blacks are the root of criminality and violence. Cocaine becomes the origin of evil. Drugs are still seen in connection with socially despised groups. The drug user is an easy target as a scapegoat in our society. Poverty, unemployment, illegality and misery are seen as deviancies, a sign of a weak moral character or a bad mentality. In a recent German publication I read the following remarks: "politicians such as Reagan and Bush, but also Chirac, use cocaine and crack as ideological fig leaves to conceal serious social problems. Led by inspiring politicians, the therapy and repression industries are employed to combat the drug problem, which is the source of all evil."

That is why we are advocates of the normalization model of social control, aiming at depolarization and integration of deviance, as opposed to a deterrence model of social control, aiming at isolation and removal of deviance. A drug addiction is a drastic element in a life and it is often a deeply disturbing factor with regards to a person's well-being.

Underneath a drug addiction, serious mental and social problems are often hiding. Many people use drugs to try to escape from misery in their life. For this reason I believe that drug use is a public health problem and that drug use cannot be effectively conti-oiled by criminal justice measures. Criminal justice offers an absurd solution to the drug problem. The prohibition of drugs has had disastrous consequences and it stands in the way of real solutions. I am convinced that we must search for the narrow path between drugs being freely available to anybody and the absolute prohibition of drugs. Fortunately, not all drug users become victims of their drug use. Research shows that many eventually stop taking drugs altogether, or manage to limit their use in such a way that mental and physical damage to their own health is reduced and practically no ill effects to society result.

During the past fifteen years we learned that harm reduction must be a basic principle of drug policy. We have given much thought to the relation between drug use and drug-related crime. We discovered that drug use and crime are both symptoms of something else with a common cause. This implies that a liberal drug policy will not automatically put a stop to crime and harassment, any more than a hard, repressive policy will solve those problems.

In our contacts with drug users we have discovered that the most relevant factor in the lives of addicts is their lifestyle. Somebody's lifestyle is the result of a field of force, constituted by the amount of baggage received at birth, the upbringing, the social environment, education, friends, chances of success, the mistakes made, the faults committed. Many addicts suffer from a very negative self-image. In our drug scene, we have cultural rebels, psychiatric patients, victims of social disruption (such as the illegal residents, drifting from one country to another, and the European proletariat), underprivileged people, losers, and genuine criminals.

There are three important issues that must be considered in connection with the life style of a drug user: The drugs, the set and the setting. These three are closely interwoven. Many political discussions are obscured, because the connection between these elements is not sufficiently recognized. Drugs are substances that influence the human consciousness. The set is the situation in which the user finds himself: his personality, his social context, his mental condition, etc. The setting is the atmosphere in which the user lives: the illegality of some drugs, the black market, the repression, the social rejection of drug use, etc.

Within the Pauluskerk and our projects at other locations we have created the following facilities, with the support of government and church subsidies and with financial help of private persons.

Admission to the church is granted to anybody who can produce a specially issued pass. In various rooms people are enabled to rest, read a newspaper, play games (such as ping-pong, checkers, chess or cards). Coffee, tea and sandwiches are available. In the evening a hot meal is provided. Several times a day, people are invited to participate in handicrafts, sewing, drawing and painting, discussion groups, Bible studies, etc. At another address in Rotterdam, our activity coordinator runs an art gallery together with drug users.

We employ three social workers who stimulate people to partake in projects such as sweeping the streets and squares, selling the Straatkrant — the Rotterdam version of the British Big Issue— allowing the seller to keep half of the sales price. Furthermore, the social workers mediate on applications for housing and social benefits. There are also pastoral workers present, ready to listen and talk to anybody who wants to. We have two toleration zones in the church where drugs may be used. Here using drugs is allowed on weekdays from 9:30 AM to 4 PM and on all seven evenings of the week from 7- 8 PM and again from 11-12 Pm. During the weekends, the zones are open from 3-4 Pts4 during the day. We provide clean needles.

A recent survey shows that approximately (all percentages given are approximates) 60 percent of our visitors do not come only to use drugs, but also to participate in the activities. This helps them to control their drug use. The remaining 40 percent come exclusively to use the toleration zones. Forty percent of our visitors are homeless and about half of them spend the night in our night shelter. Thirty percent do not attend a methadone program. Sixty-seven percent use heroin and cocaine, whereas 10 percent use cocaine only and 11 percent use only heroin. Fifty-three percent are Dutch-born. The remaining 47 percent originate mainly from Suriname, the Antilles, Indonesia and Morocco. Eighty-four percent are 30 years or older (16 percent are younger than 30). Eighty-three percent are male, 17 percent are female.

Two hundred volunteers act as hosts and hostesses in the various projects. We employ security personnel who keep guard around the clock. We have an excellent understanding with the police, with whom we cooperate closely.

We Dutch have committed ourselves to the principle of "opportunity." This makes it possible for us to regulate the drug trade in the church. Only three dealers, whom I have had screened by the police, are permitted to deal in the church, at certain times and on certain conditions: the quality of their drugs is tested, their prices must be reasonable, exploitation and the use of violence are forbidden. Their customers have the opportunity to comment on the dealing in their weekly meetings. Considering the law, the police must keep a low profile. The public prosecutor may decide not to prosecute somebody because regulation of the trade contributes to an improvement in public safety or public health. He may, however, decide to prosecute anytime he sees fit to do so. The police, who must execute this law, consider this regularization of drugs a good thing, but they cannot be involved with the trade, the law being what it is. For this reason, no trading takes place at times when police officers on their rounds pay a visit to the church.

We invest much energy in resocialization, risk reduction and prevention. We have a nurse in the church who keeps an eye on the health of the visi tors. She treats infected wounds and organizes visits to doctors, when necessary. She also controls the hygiene in the locations and gives instruction on the correct way to use a needle. By these means the situation in the drug scene in the Pauluskerk has been regulated and made manageable.
The customers in the heroin and cocaine scene are growing older. We are fascinated by the new house party culture, where XTC is coming into vogue. This is a culture of experiencing. There was a time when we believed in cultural changes that would lead to the solution of the world's problems. That belief has waned in the postmodern era. In the house party culture no message is being spread to convert people concerning social or ideological changes. Short-term happiness is what's being asked for. The XTC may contribute to removing the obstacles barring the way to that happiness. People unite in their yearning for love, happiness, and peace and unity. Obviously using XTC portends as yet unknown risks. Supervision is therefore needed. Prohibition would only create problems. It is absolutely necessary that we take young people and their perception of the world seriously. Many will only be using XTC for a short period. This kind of culture must be controlled by rules made on a basis of an understanding of the perceptions of the young. Repression would lead to disaster.

The Pauluskerk is a shadow society, where we live according to the ideal of humane society, in which we choose the side of the weak and where we attempt to develop a policy which can contribute to the possibilities of kicking off, for stabilizing the use of drugs, for integrating use and for harm reduction. •

Hans Visser is the minister of St. Paul's Church in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Rev. Visser turned St. Paul's into a sanctuary for street drug users and other marginalized populations. He is the winner of DPF's 1996 Norman E. Zinberg Award for Achievement in the Field of Medicine and Treatment.

REFERENCES

Leuw, Ed. and H. Marshall. 1994. Between Prohibition and Legalization — the Dutch Experiment in Drug Policy. Amsterdam/New York.

Gravendaal, M., Ed. Leuw and H. Nelin. 1995. A World of Opportunities. New York.

Nolte, Quensel, Schultz, Bremen. 1996. Wider besseres Wissen.