as published in Collage, the International Youth Magazine, winter 2000 number 11
Interview with Mario Lap
by patricia johnson

Mario Lap is an activist and advisor on drug policy in the Netherlands. He taught a narcotics course to the Netherlands national police force for 10 years and currently maintains an information service on the internet called Drugtext. Mr. Lap is also active with the Central and Eastern European Harm Reduction Network, and other Harm Reduction Networks.

PJ: You work with 'harm reduction' services. What does that mean?
Mario Lap: There are two angles to look at it, either to look at the substance abuse problem from a health point of view, a government or policy that is aimed at reducing health risks. Or you could say that certain policies have law and order at their prime core. That is how you have to define such things. If you look at the policy of the USA, for example, its prime objective is law enforcement. Their goal is to reduce drug use by having very strong law enforcement and locking 1 all dealers up in jail. Where, for example the other end of the spectrum, the Netherlands government's goal is to reduce health risks, to make it as little a public health problem as possible. That doesn't mean you don't have law enforcement, but it is a shift in where you put your money. If you ask the American government, "Are you interested in public health?" the real answer they should give is, "Yes we are, but that's not where we put our money." They have two million people locked up in jail, of which 1 million are there for drugs offences. That costs a lot of money. Here in the Netherlands the people getting locked up are the dealers and traffickers. Not the users. Users end up in the public health system. They are treated. That's where the money goes.

PJ: Do you think the Netherlands policy has been effective in reducing drug use and drug related crime?
ML: Effectiveness always has to be to put in perspective. You are never 100% effective. That would mean there are no problems, and that is never the case with drugs. Not even with legal drugs like alcohol or tobacco. Similarly, it is never 100% effective with illicit drugs. But yes, I think the Netherlands government is much more successful than the US government. I am looking at very clear data, like drug deaths, how many people have overdoses. Drugs deaths, people who get marginalised, the average number of users. For example in the Dutch statistics, the problematic users (addicted to heroin, cocaine, hard drugs) are much fewer. Drug-related deaths are extremely low in the Netherlands. The average age of hard drug consumers is higher-near 40 years old now in the Netherlands - which means there are very few new hard drug users in the Netherlands.

PJ: That's a good sign.
ML: A very good sign. If you look at England, Britain, they have a gigantic problem with large numbers of young heroin users. The drug most people will always talk about first is marijuana, cannabis. If you look at the policy with selling cannabis in coffee shops in the Netherlands, if you look at how many people consume cannabis those figures are more or less the same as Germany, France, the surrounding countries. So it doesn't make a difference if you sell it in a coffee shop or in the street. No difference in the number of users. What does that prove? That use of that drug is not based on a government policy but on fashion, trends. Whether or not young people consider it fashionable or not to smoke cannabis is more important than the government policy. The difference is that young people in the Netherlands who consume cannabis don't come into contact with hard drug dealers because the coffee shops are shut closed if there is even a sign of hard drugs. That is the aim of the policy. To divide the markets. Do you know the famous stepping stone theory? The gateway drugs theory? They state that all people who get addicted to heroin started with a marijuana joint. The Dutch policy is originally based on the idea that the pharmacological component of these theories is pure nonsense: that if you smoke cannabis all of a sudden you get a longing for more and harder drugs like heroin. That's nonsense. But the social component of the theory is true of course. If one dealer sells marijuana and heroin, and young people buy marijuana and all of a sudden the dealer doesn't have marijuana he'll try to sell them heroin. And I put it very basically. If there is one scene, one group where all the illicit drugs are sold and to be obtained then it is logical that young people will come into contact with hard drugs much more easily than when you have a system where the outlet points for cannabis have no hard drugs at those premises. That is more effective. And the figures have proven it.

PJ: Do you think that drugs serve the needs of international political trends, power plays?
ML: Definitely.

PJ: How so?
ML: You have to put drugs, like anything, in historical perspective in order to understand where we are now. The drug treaties we have today were introduced to the world in 1918 at the end of the first World War. Most European countries and countries of the world have signed this treaty Not because they decided to sign the treaty, but because it was an addendum [insisted upon by Woodrow Wilson on behalf of the US] of the peace treaty ending the war. You have to bear in mind that there was no big drug problem in Europe, though we had maybe an alcohol problem, So in 1960, much later, when the basic big drug treaty signed at a convention in New York in 1961 there was no drug problem here. It was starting but wasn't a substantial problem. And that treaty was the result of all sorts of legal situations already in place. It was only a formalization. If you look at international drug treaties .... are they of any objective use to west European nations? No, they are counter-productive actually. They don't play a role in the political spectrum or system. But in the US it is a totally difference case. Drug policy plays a vital role in politics. Two key elements. Internally, if you look at the prisons, two million people are in jail and about one million of them for drugs. We all know that the percentage of black and other minorities in jail is enormous, much more than in the general population. So there is a social/cultural component which institutions like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International complain about. To put it bluntly, drug policy in the US is a racist tool. I am willing to say that because it is true. It really is. If you are a young black American you have 3 times the chance of ending up in jail for drugs than in college. Why? As a young American, we all know that there is poverty, no chances [for minorities] ... but with dealing you can make money. So internally it is a very important political thing. Especially when you know that the labor unions of the prison workers are a very powerful instrument. And investments in the prison industry in the US are gigantic. So there is an economic interest. Externally, there is the power of the US to control Latin America. Latin America from the US perspective is their back garden. Now drug policy enables the US to fly around Latin America with helicopters, invade countries, take the president of the country and put him in jail, and kill a few hundred people and no one complains. They've invaded Panama, killed a few hundred civilians and kidnapped the President and put him in a US jail. Can you imagine that Holland invades France, kidnaps Chirac and puts him in a Dutch jail? I mean, totally unthinkable. But America can do this through drug policy. Now they are in full war in Columbia, and they are sort of taking the country over because of cocaine. This is an ongoing thing. Now you would think, "They are such a big power why don't they end this war and win it?" They don't want to win it. The moment they win it they can't fly around Latin America anymore with helicopters and control the whole place. So drug policy is a control instrument of the USA. Internally and externally, and especially in their back garden.

PJ: How much does the US influence European drug policy trends. ?
ML: Gigantically, they call the stakes. They are in all the major organizations. They pull all the strings, meaning all the United Nations "clubs". And their influence internally in Europe is very very strong through many means: police education, the influence of the police, infiltration, covert actions. There have been gigantic scandals through US police operations in the Netherlands. Secondly, they put pressure on Dutch policy for example: They lie about Dutch policy. That has enormous consequences. In fact if you want to do something progressive in a country, they try to stop it with all possible means. Recently, a few weeks a go, the US (through the INCB) really blackmailed the Australian government. The Australian government wanted to have specific harm reduction instruments, particularly to stop AIDS. And the US told them that if they do this Australia will have lost its license to grow medicinal opium in Tasmania. This would cost the country billions of dollars. The US doesn't hide it, it's pretty open. They aren't afraid of the rest of the world, if you know what I mean. They think they rule the place.

PJ: Yes, they think and they do...
ML: They think and they do. It's they way they work. They aren't very timid, to say the least.

PJ: Do you think criminalization of drug users, putting them in jail, helps to stop drug use?
ML: If you look at it objectively it doesn't work. If it would have worked it should have worked by now. But the number of people in jail is growing and there are more drugs, so it is not effective, is it?

PJ: How does this affect young people most of all
ML: One of the basic reasons this affects young people is very important, but people never talk about it. Young people become totally resentful of the law. You want your citizens to have some respect for the law. If you make unjust, crazy laws it doesn't work because people don't believe in the law in general any more. Secondly, if you make a ridiculous law in which marijuana is [treated] the same as heroin, and the youngsters smoke a joint and notice it's not a big deal, they aren't addicted, none of their body parts fall off after the joint, then they are bound to think that heroin is the same. That it is not that bad. So it is a very stupid policy as well. There are no proportions and no perspective. I would think a working policy for drugs would define and make a difference between different drugs. No person in his right mind would think that marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy, and heroin are all the same. They are not the same substances at all. If you could ideally make rules and regulations for these drugs they would look totally different. Personally I don't see much solution for heroin outside a medical schedule. Where for cannabis it is totally unnecessary. If you are to regulate cannabis it is much easier then even alcohol because it is less dangerous. If you drink a liter or two of vodka you could even die. It's a lethal drug. People, get brain and liver problems. Thousands of people in every nation in Europe are treated every year for alcohol addiction , for all kinds of physical problems. There are people that die every year. We don't have one case in the whole medical history of this planet of a person who has died from cannabis. If you want to commit suicide with cannabis it is practically impossible. The only way would be to take 10,000 kilos of cannabis, put them in a crane, stand underneath and drop them on your head. Then you're dead. But there is no other way. You would have to smoke something like 500 grams. But that is physically impossible because after 1-2 grams you fall asleep.

PJ: What do you think drives drug use?
ML: With drug use, "just say no" doesn't work, because another group of people will say, "just say yes" because they are young and want to take risks. Anything effective for young people has to be [through] education and communication. That means the best way to talk to young people, to prevent problematic drug use, is through their peers and friends: people they trust. Provide young people with lots of objective information. Information they CAN believe. If you provide them with information saying that cannabis will kill you and it's the worse of all and then you are going to educate them about heroin, they won't believe you because you provided them with wrong information [about cannabis]. So there has to be a coherent set of information for what are now illicit drugs, alcohol, tobacco, and other risky activities that young people might do, like gambling.

PJ: What do you think is the most obvious difference between drug use in the US vs. western vs. eastern Europe. Do you see any significant trends across or between these regions?
ML: Not really. Five years ago yes, but it is much closer now to each other.

PJ: Why do you think that is? Because of "MTV"?.
ML: That is hard to say. Fashion, yes. But to just say MTV is too simple. It is fashion and trends. If you were to have a hold or grasp on these trends you would be very rich. But nobody does. Not even MTV. Look at MDMA, ecstasy, why is it in America now? If we look at MDMA which is so popular worldwide as a drug now, 20 years ago you couldn't sell it for a cent because nobody wanted it because it didn't do anything. There is a trend for lighter drugs worldwide and also it's with ecstasy. You cannot objectively or scientifically say, "this is because of this." The only real thing you can find that has changed is that MDMA is now forbidden. Then the reason that ecstacy is used so much is that it's forbidden.

PJ: Do you think that creates a romance in young people's minds, that it is forbidden?
ML: I don't say this, but if you look at the Netherlands, MDMA was entered into criminal law in 1989. Before 1989 there were about 500 users and now there are tens of thousands of users. So forbidding substances is not very effective. It simply doesn't help. We don't even talk about the amount of 'black' money, the power of criminal organisations, etc., that are caused by this gigantic problem. Not to say the influence in democracies, whole governments that get blackmailed and infiltrated by criminal organisations. We see that everywhere.

PJ: So then would you say criminal networks benefit from restrictive drugs policies?
ML: Definitely. Where did the mafia in the US start? Because America had alcohol prohibition. The moment America started alcohol prohibition, all of a sudden guys like Al Capone got very rich. And after that companies got rich .... if you look at(for example) the history of Seagram, one of the main whiskey manufacturers. They were criminals. One of the richest families of the USA.

PJ: About addiction. Would you say that it is more psychological or physical?
ML: Well you get into scientific definition problems. Because addiction is an abused word. The best word is dependency. People can be addicted to practically anything. And are. You and I could be addicted to waking up in the morning and needing a newspaper in the morning or we don't feel right. We need to take a shower in the morning or evening. You need steak or French fries or potatoes. But you can define physical and psychological dependency. Physical dependency you see with substances such as opiates or heroin. That means you take it for a couple of weeks, then you stop and you wake up in the morning and you feel very ill, very sick and you need heroin or you don't feel right. That is physical dependency. Then you have psychological dependency. The strongest example of this is cigarettes or nicotine. If you have to put a scale of dependency and Nicotine would be about 7 out of 10 and heroin about 5. Nicotine is about the most addictive or dependency-creating substance we know. But psychological dependency on drugs is also very important. Cocaine is not very physically addictive. When people snort cocaine it is not the case that they feel sick the next morning if they don't get cocaine. But their minds say they want it. They feel horrible psychologically when they don't get it. They have a longing. The official jargon word is craving; people crave for that substance. It is difficult to define the phenomenon. It's in your brain. As I said before, people can have that for lots of things not concerning drugs-meaning gambling, sex, you name it. All behavioral patterns that people have they can have in an obsessive way, and that is dependency.

PJ: What about overcoming addiction, or dependency. Do you think there are certain strategies that are especially successful or is it different for each case?
ML: You have to understand that addiction or' dependency often plays a role in people's lives. For example if you look at an addiction that originated in a family or relational problem, then it is very easy to do something about it. I mean very effective. I have to draw an example, a family with one child, a son. The father has a shop and is working 18 hours per day on the shop. The mother does the education of the child and everything. One day the mother finds a piece of hash/cannabis in her son's pocket. She goes to her husband, "Look what your son does, he uses drugs!" And Daddy for the first time goes to his son and says, "What are you doing? I am going to kill you!" Do you think the son will never do drugs again? No. What you see is that before you know it he uses heroin because this is the first time he has attention from his father. That is the psychological phenomenon you see beyond it. And before you know it in 6 months time you see a family with a son sleeping on the balcony, and mamma brings his food out to the balcony, and he is addicted to heroin. So what you do then is family therapy. The success rate for that is very high, it is a curable dependency. On the other hand you see people who have mental problems, people who are (in normal English) a little bit crazy. Heroin for example is a very effective blocker. Some people that are very scared, paranoid or have all kinds of psychological or psychiatric problems often selfmedicate themselves with drugs. That is very hard, almost impossible, to do something about. Because they are crazy. The drug has a function which is effective. So what you could do is change them from heroin to legal substances which help their mental problems. But that is easier said than done. That often doesn't work. If you look at constant problematic hard drug use in the population of most countries there is a disproportionate amount of people who are self -medicating. And there is nothing you can do about that actually, if you look objectively. You can put them in a mental asylum, but do we want that?

PJ: What do you think is the most dangerous drug, or does it depend on why the person is using it? A lot Of People will say that heroin is the most dangerous drug, but do you think it depends on other factors?
ML: There are two ways to look at it. In numbers, the most dangerous drug is tobacco, nicotine. That kills the most people. And I define danger as dead. Wouldn't you? No, I mean to put it objectively if you smoke one cigarette you won't die. But if we look at the figures, most drugrelated deaths are from lung cancer. And if we look at heroin as a substance, if we look at these 45, 50 or 60 year old junkies, physically they are not in that bad of shape. Heroin is a dangerous substance, but not in the poisonous sense of the word. It doesn't destroy your liver or other vital parts of your body. Why? Because it is almost the same, very close, to a substance we have in our body. If you start running after half and hour it will hurt because you can't run that long. Then if you continue running the pain goes away because our body produces a substance, a morphine. And heroin is actually the same substance, only you put much much more into yourself. So in that sense it is not a very toxic substance. But on the other hand if you take too much you simply stop breathing and you die. It slows you down so you stop breathing. So it is a very dangerous substance. But dangerous is not a simple word. So, "What is the most dangerous substance?" If you look at numbers and the people who die from it, it's nicotine. If you look objectively at really dangerous substance then you get substances like strychnine, or PCP which is very dangerous because people get totally crazy when they take it ... that twenty policemen still cannot stop somebody and when you hit the person he doesn't even feel the pain

PJ: What if you take into account public health issues like AIDS, does that affect the scale of which drugs are more or less dangerous?
ML: But AIDS relates to the way of distribution of the actual drug. AIDS is a risk because people inject. But if we look at Holland maybe 10-15% of users inject heroin. Most people smoke it. And why don't they inject it? Because injection is a result of repression. The more repressive a policy, the more risky the ways of drug administration. It's very simple. If heroin is very expensive, people will use it in the most effective way: injection. This is also quick and hidable etc. In Holland it is not that expensive anymore, and people smoke it. It's also a cultural thing. Injection in Holland, through public health measures, has become a no-no, you simply don't do it. It's very bad for you, it causes AIDS, etc. People smoke it, and at least then you have much much less chance of AIDS.

PJ: Then you would say that a lot of drug policies create rather than solve public health problems?
ML: They CAUSE health problems. The drug policy measures, the laws, were never written to reduce health problems. They were written to simply say, "We put up this rule, the drugs won't be there anymore." They forgot that the drugs are there anyway. It is simply very unrealistic. With any other thing you would simply say, "This is crazy." But with drugs it is almost like a religion. People believe that if you just say this and put up laws, it will help. For twenty years now and longer we see that it doesn't work. So you have to say it is sort of a religion, so we keep believing that it works while we see that it definitely doesn't work. Never ever in history have people used as many drugs as now. It is rising everywhere, except here in Holland. In the US, rising. in England, rising. France, rising. Everywhere rising. The police apprehend more drugs but there are more drugs in the streets. It is not working.

PJ: Do you have any final comments for our readers, for young people?
ML: Well, I would think that young people should call for an open discussion and an open debate. Especially among each other. The worst thing, the worst result of the drug policy we have worldwide is that everything is in the closet. That has enormous negative consequences. This is a subject that you want to be open about with your parents, teachers, and vice versa. The only thing that works, that does work .... if we look at alcohol, an accepted drug in the western world, especially western Europe. Why doesn't that create enormous disasters? Because people are taught how to use alcohol, by their parents, by their peers, by their friends. How not to do it. We don't even know that we do this, because it is so normal. That is the only way to get effective policy.