Dutch Respond to Libels By
Drug Bizarro; Correct His Data;
DEAland Media ContinueTheir Cover-Up
(Ed. note: It is good to see that the Dutch
government is publicly correcting the Drug Czar. Although Reuters is carrying the story
with the correct numbers and an accurate description of Dutch drugs policy, it still is
not being reported by major DEAland media. In other words, a Cabinet level official of
the US government is getting a free ride on lying about a major ally on a topic that is
currently "news" -- by their own definition -- on a subject which the official
himself has said is important. This is really very simple, Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey was
off by a factor of ten about the Dutch murder rate, which he attributed to the Dutch
tolerance of marijuana. Our murder rate is five time the Dutch rate. We arrest 1,500
people per day on marijuana charges. But this isn’t worth reporting?)
See
Drug Bizarro
In Sweden Digs Himself In Deeper With Specific Lies About the Dutch;
Says Their Murder Rate Is Twice DEAland’s, But It Is Just 20% Of Ours!
and
Go Dutch!
July 14, 1998
From Reuters
By Christine Lucassen
DUTCH REBUKE U.S. DRUGS ADVISER
AMSTERDAM, July 14 (Reuters) - The Netherlands rebuked a top U.S. drugs policy adviser on Tuesday for getting his facts wrong about Dutch drug-related crime but said General Barry McCaffrey was welcome to learn from the Dutch experience.
McCaffrey, speaking in Stockholm during a European fact-finding mission, said on Monday the per capita murder rate in the Netherlands was double that in the United States and blamed the liberal Dutch attitude towards soft drugs.
In Amsterdam, Europe’s drugs capital according to McCaffrey,
coffee shops peddling marijuana are almost as common as bars selling beer. Nevertheless,
the Dutch say addiction to hard drugs like heroin is less common than in other countries.
See
Comparison of drug addiction
levels in various European countries.
"The murder rate in Holland is double that in the United States, McCaffrey told Swedish reporters.
The overall crime rate in Holland is probably 40 percent higher than the United States. That’s drugs."
According to the White House adviser, there were 17.58 murders for every 100,000 inhabitants in the Netherlands in 1995, compared with 8.22 murders per 100,000 people in the United States.
The Dutch government’s Central Planning Bureau poured scorn on McCaffrey’s figures.
Official data put the Dutch murder rate at 1.8 per 100,000 people in 1996, up from 1.5 at the start of the decade.
"The figure (McCaffrey is using) is not right. He is adding in attempted murders," a planning bureau spokesman told Reuters.
McCaffrey, who is due to visit the Netherlands on Thursday, contends that Amsterdam is Europe’s biggest drugs market and has described the Dutch drugs policy as a "disaster."
He said the Netherlands is an export centre for synthetic drugs like Ecstasy to Britain and the United States.
"(McCaffrey’s) statements show...that he is not coming totally unbiased," Foreign Affairs Ministry spokeswoman Birgitta Tazelaar told Reuters.
"We hope he is coming here to learn from the Dutch drugs policy and one can only learn if open-minded, she said. We don’t want to deprive him of the opportunity to inform himself."
On his visit, McCaffrey plans to steer clear of the notorious coffee shops but will visit an outpatients clinic for drug addicts.
He will also take in the latest in Dutch drug experiments—a Health Ministry centre where hardcore addicts are given free heroin with the aim of reducing drug-related crime.
"We hope his opinions will then come more into line with the facts the way we see them here," Tazelaar said. "We would rather enter a discussion than turn our back on dialogue."
The Health Ministry cast doubt on whether McCaffrey’s visit could still serve to create an open exchange on drugs policy.
The Netherlands, often considered a front-runner in the area of drugs tolerance, argues there should be a strict separation between hard and soft drugs policy.
It tolerates the small-scale production and sale of soft drugs but actively discourages the abuse of hard drugs.
The Dutch government clashed with McCaffrey last week over comments he made in an interview with Cable Network News (CNN) television. McCaffrey called Dutch drugs policy a "disaster."
"I must say that I find the timing of your remarks—six days before your planned visit to the Netherlands with a view to gaining first-hand knowledge about Dutch drugs policy and its results—rather astonishing," Joris Vos, Dutch ambassador to the United States, said in a letter to McCaffrey.