AN OVERVIEW OF DUTCH TOLERANCE

A baggy pants Vaudeville comic greets his funny-faced friend. "Just back from Paris, Pal? How was it?"

"Great!" says the friend. "Eiffel Tower. Left Bank. But what got me the most was the kids. So smart! Four, five years old and already speaking French!"

It helps to remember this joke when talking to youngsters in the Netherlands - a place where tolerance seems to be the official party line, taught in school and church. Some version of harm reduction - the philosophy of accepting some of society’s blemishes so as not to do more damage trying to stamp them out - is pretty universally accepted in this northern European country of 15 million.

Remembering the punchline may even be more important when talking to Amsterdam police officers or Dutch government ministers. Hearing a detective express sympathy and acceptance of the hard drug addicts in his midst - you have to remember it’s part him, of course, but partly the way he was raised. The same when you hear a Dutch member of the European Parliament state proudly that she helped establish cannabis coffeeshops earlier in her political career.

They make it hard not to be ashamed of the United States, where the percentage of citizens in prison (approaching 2 million) is the highest in the developed world - nearly that of Russia, according to figures compiled by the Sentencing Project. Where politicians advocate draconian Prohibitions of increasing numbers of behaviors to win elections. And where, despite these policies (or because of them) rates of youth drug use and abortions soar.

Back in the Cafe Ebeling, I am telling Amsterdam sociologist Bart van Heerikhuizen that in Alaska, a man was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for growing marijuana in commercial quantities. I tell van Heerikhuizen - the father of a 17-year-old and a 13-year-old - that in my home town, a teenager was charged with a felony for having residue in a marijuana pipe on the school grounds - making him have to - at the very least - answer "yes" to that question on job applications and submit to drug testing for the rest of his life.

"Shouldn’t you include this in your article, too?" van Heerikhuizen all but cries out. "It is so strange for a Dutch person to hear this kind of thing!" Later van Heerikhuizen tells me the Dutch have an expression for U.S.-style Prohibition: "Mopping the floor when the faucet is running."

"The normal American citizen has such an idiotic picture of drugs," says Herman-Louis Matser, who works with recreational drug users for an Amsterdam drug policy and service organization, Adviesburo Drugs. "Such a prejudice has nothing to do with the truth.

Because people are told lies, now you have to act as though the lies are true?"

The Dutch get angry when you question their tolerance - an important part of a national identity they sometimes claim not to have. Question their beliefs and you run the risk of hearing criticisms of such "Americanisms" such as the "24-hour economy"(the Dutch close shops at 6:00pm and aren’t open on Sundays), welfare "reform" and employee downsizing.

The Dutch themselves say their tolerance and willingness to accept new, and often disquieting developments, stem from being a small nation, dependent on trade with often more powerful partners.

"When you have to make a deal with someone, you don’t talk about your political preference or your religious preference," van Heerikhuizen explains.

"The Dutch government is more pragmatic than most governments, they look at things in a very real way," says Susan LaPolice, a former U.S. Midwesterner who has spent five years in Holland working with cannabis coffeeshop and seed companies and is now importing and distributing hemp products in Europe and the U.S.

(Marijuananews note: Susan is a good friend who probably knows more about the Dutch cannabis scene than any other American, and even more than many Dutch participants.)

"They look at harm reduction - what is the least harm to society and they control things from that. Not from a Puritan attitude. As realists."

I’ve caught Hedy D’Ancona on a good day, A former Dutch minister of health and now a Netherlands representative to the European parliament, D’Ancona’s Social Democrats and the liberal Left in general gained substantial ground in Holland’s multi-party election just days before I spoke with her.

"All over Europe, things are liberalizing," D’Ancona says. "Ireland, Greece and Portugal - traditionally among the most repressive countries in Europe toward abortion and other moral issues - have loosened their grip. Even hyper-critical France seems to be coming over to a Dutch-style tolerance in questions of soft drug use. Now, only Sweden stands out as a bulwark of Prohibitionist policies."

"In Ireland, homosexuality was forbidden," D’Ancona notes, "and now it is forbidden also to discriminate."

D’Ancona has always supported the cannabis coffeeshops, but shares the view of many other Netherlanders that there was not enough regulation of the establishments at the beginning and too many opened in too short a time - a number of them in Amsterdam, catering largely to drug tourists from the United States and England. But this doesn’t make D’Ancona back off from her long-held beliefs.

"I am in favor of the coffeeshops for harm reduction," she says. "Because on the street corner today, no marijuana. Only heroin and cocaine.

Our deepest purpose was to separate (hard and soft drugs) and we succeeded in that."

Western societies that wish to follow the Dutch lead may have problems, says Amsterdam clinical psychologist Andre Tuinier, who could represent the leading edge of tolerance for drug use. The editor of the psychiatry and sociology journal, the Deviant, this former member of the 1960’s protest group the Provos, now teaches and works with drug user organizations.

"There is very limited room for the idea that using drugs can be an expression of curiosity or can be a very legitimate defense against the invasion of our mind by the dominant culture," he says. "Together with a number of advanced control mechanisms, the dominant culture that has taken root in the West includes the idea that you should only have one consciousness."

"The counterculture is no longer a starting point for unity," Tuinier rues. "The defense of people who want to use (drugs) is very weak. I always hear some arguments in terms of harm reduction - that marijuana or heroin is not harmful. I want to see arguments showing that it can be clearly beneficial. And the same goes for (psychoactive) mushrooms and tea. We have to defend the right to (do it) and not just be reactive."

America’s influence on Dutch drug use has been profound. Oregon and California marijuana growers originally developed the strains of high-potency pot the Dutch have been perfecting. American hard drug users popularized IV heroin use in a population that had been smoking the drug. Defending U.S, policies is an easy way to pick a fight with Susan LaPolice. "Separating hard and soft drugs is the first step," she says. "Bless your dying day that American youth are smoking marijuana and not taking the harder stuff."

LaPolice’s fear is that the police pressure targeted on marijuana, psychedelic mushrooms and other soft drugs - along with disinformation campaigns - make it harder for experimental-minded youth to make wise choices. Hard drug users and their advocates say the more difficult and expensive hard drugs are to obtain, the greater the problems with associated crime, overdoses and increased rates of use. The equation works beyond just drugs. Arrests of prostitutes, say advocates of "sex workers", only drives the problem into dark corners where both prostitutes and clients may be harmed.

"Better to have a few drug victims than an intolerant society," says Adviesburo’s Matser. I tell him in the U.S. we’re told we need to sacrifice the few addicts to protect the whole of society from drugs.