Abstract
This chapter describes and analyzes the various phases of the liberal, tolerant Dutch approach toward cannabis during the last 50 years. In the 1960s, prosecutors in large Dutch cities started using their discretionary powers to stop prosecuting cannabis users. In the 1970s, the legal discretion to prosecute a crime only when opportune was extended to the sales of cannabis by house dealers in so-called youth centers. In the 1980s, this systematic application of the principle of opportunity also applied to coffeeshops, and as of 1995, exclusively to coffeeshops. Despite different rules and regulations for cannabis and coffeeshops, cannabis has remained illegal. The focus of Dutch cannabis policy has been on decriminalizing cannabis on the demand and retail side. Simple possession has been formally decriminalized from a crime to a low-priority minor offense. Retail sales in coffeeshops have been de facto decriminalized. If coffeeshops respect the nationally set rules, their (technically criminal) retail sales are officially tolerated. Cannabis production and wholesale distribution, on the other hand, have remained illegal. For the last 15 years, public-private partnerships have invested heavily in detecting marijuana-growing operations. The result is a cannabis and coffeeshop policy that can be characterized as dialectical, moving between de facto decriminalized retail sales and totally illegal, enforced production and wholesale trade. The political unwillingness to consider ways to further reduce cannabis-related crime has become criminogenic, especially in the context of cannabis tourism, which has stimulated illegal cannabis production.
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Notes
- 1.
In this chapter, the term “coffeeshop” is spelled as one word, as is common in the Netherlands, although in English this word would generally be written as two words.
- 2.
In general, countries and their prosecutor’s offices chose either the principle of opportunity or the legality principle. The legality principle does not offer much discretionary power to prosecutors: if one cannabis user carrying 1 g is being prosecuted, all users carrying 1 g should likewise be prosecuted. In countries with the principle of opportunity, the prosecutor has some freedom to differentiate between users and decide whether to prosecute them.
- 3.
Boekhout van Solinge (2004, p. 130) mentioned other examples in Dutch legal culture in which rules were made for activities that were not formally allowed: brothels and prostitution in the seventeenth century and locations for homosexual encounters in the first half of the twentieth century.
- 4.
A coffeeshop owner once told the author that for many years marijuana supplies have been lower in the summer, which leads to temporarily higher wholesale prices. It is during the summer that many Dutch, including marijuana growers, go on holiday. During the summer, there is also more cannabis demand by tourists visiting the Netherlands. The combination of more demand and less supply logically leads to higher wholesale prices during the summer.
- 5.
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van Solinge, T.B. (2017). The Dutch Model of Cannabis Decriminalization and Tolerated Retail. In: Savona, E., Kleiman, M., Calderoni, F. (eds) Dual Markets. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65361-7_9
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