August 6, 1998

AMSTERDAM — The Dutch health ministry Thursday rejected allegations by the U.S. drugs policy adviser, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, that prisons in the Netherlands were bursting at the seams because of its liberal drugs policy.

Speaking to Reuters in Los Angeles on Wednesday, McCaffrey said that Dutch

tolerance of soft drugs such as marijuana had contributed to an explosion in the jail population and a sharp rise in the number of drug users. "The Dutch have consistently followed a harm-reduction policy...In their country, drug-abuse rates among their youngsters have gone way up under this policy and their prison population has gone way up," McCaffrey said.

The United States’ preventive approach, in contrast, was a roaring success, the White House adviser added.

"Our model has resulted in lowering the rates of drug abuse in America by 50 percent. Cocaine use is down by 70 percent; drug-related murders are down by a third," he said.

Dutch prison statistics tell a similar story. According to the ministry, 73 people out of every 100,000 are serving a jail sentence in the Netherlands, far below the 645 recorded in the United States. Cannabis consumption among 18-year-olds is also much lower in the Netherlands, according to the health ministry.

"We know Mr McCaffrey’s views. We know he is against our coffee shops. We know he is against our heroin program," the health ministry spokesman said, referring to two of the most controversial aspects of Dutch drugs policy.

So-called coffee shops that peddle marijuana with impunity and a pilot scheme to supply heroin to people who are deemed to be incurable addicts have raised eyebrows in the United States.

Robert Housman, chief policy adviser to McCaffrey, said he accepted the Dutch prison population was small compared with the U.S, but noted that it had doubled in recent years.
(Ed. note: It is easy to double a low number. US prison population has more than tripled since 1980 from a number that was much higher than the Dutch.)

He also said there was no doubt the Netherlands was a major production and distribution center for Ecstasy and amphetamines.

"But the irony is we have a tremendously good cooperation with the Dutch," he told Reuters by telephone from Washington.

"They are doing a tremendous job in terms of interdiction in the Caribbean, in terms of stopping the manufacture of Ecstasy and amphetamines. There is a high degree of coordination."

Housman minimized the differences between the Netherlands and the United States. The real battle, he said, was against the traffickers and manufacturers.

"There is a lot of congruence and there are also differences. We have our approach and the Dutch have theirs.

But what is happening is that there are forces at work to legalize drugs and they are trying to bring these wonderfully allied governments into conflict," he said.

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The following is an excerpt from another Reuters story from the same day:

"An unbowed McCaffrey said on Wednesday: "There was a huge uproar over murder rates and crime stats, and was I right or wrong?...

For an American to suggest that their crime rates were higher than the U.S. absolutely blew their mind."

August 2, 1998

Q: Many press reports focused on your trip to the Netherlands, which

allows the sale of small amounts of marijuana and distributes heroin to addicts. What did you learn there?

A: I learned about the ferociously aggressive law enforcement that both Switzerland and the Netherlands started in about 1996. They’ve had it - bam! They went after drug abuse and its public consequences, particularly the Swiss police, who have incredible authority . . .

Many would argue they’re asking law enforcement to sustain flawed drug policy. . .

The other thing we did during the visit was we started laying down other people’s comparative data. God, did it annoy them. I said drug abuse is tied to societal problems . It’s hard to determine causality. But if you have high levels of crack cocaine use, there’s high levels of crime.
(Ed. note: The Dutch never had the sort of crack cocaine epidemic that DEAland experienced, so this is not relevant to the Dutch.)

We told the Dutch the comparative crime rates are higher than the United States’ -almost double in some cases. In some cases there is much as four times higher than Germany, France, Belgium. Comparative data, I know, is a flaky. But in everyone of them, their crime rates are higher than ours.

(Ed. note: As noted, the US murder rate is almost five times the Dutch rate.  In the US a total of 97,464 forcible rapes were reported to law enforcement during 1995. In the Uniform Crime Reporting Program, the victims of forcible rape are always female, and in 1995 an estimated 72 of every 100,000 females in the US  were reported rape victims. In 1990 there were 1321 rapes in the Netherlands. This is approximately one fourth the US rate.)

That’s1995 data. I don’t know what it is today with their aggressive policing. In the United States drug use is coming down and crime rates plummeting.
See
Is Crime In DEAland Really Down? Or Is It Just That Police Fraud In Reporting Crime Is Increasing?

From the Dutch Embassy web site August 6, 1998 http://www.netherlands-embassy.org/drug-inf.htm

Per capita spending on drug-related law enforcement:
$27 per capita in the Netherlands;
$81 per capita in the U.S.
(Sources: Netherlands Ministry of Justice; White House Office of National Drug Control Strategy)

More Dutch Data

In most EU countries, such as the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Sweden and the Netherlands, the use of cannabis has increased in the past few years. A similar trend is, unfortunately, discernible with regard to synthetic drugs. Evidently, international youth culture has more influence on the use of these substances than government policies. International cooperation is therefore vital in tackling this problem.