Who knows? It’s seems more possible than it has been before – even in the Netherlands, with its softer-than-usual policy towards such things as marijuana – after an opinion piece (Save the country, allow drugs), co-written by some local political notables, appeared yesterday in the leading quality newspaper, the NRC Handelsblad. Among the article’s nine co-signatories, the ones that stand out above the rest are probably Dr. Els Borst-Eilers and Ms. Hedy d’Ancona, both former national Ministers of Health, and most definitely Prof. Frits Bolkestein, former Dutch Eurocommissioner, former Minister of Defense, and one of the most influential politicians on the national scene in the last twenty years.

Even here, such a policy suggestion is highly controversial and, in view of the high-profile names attached to it, it immediately provoked comment within the Dutch press – from within the NRC itself, of course, but also in the form of a press-agency treatment available in other newspapers, among which Trouw (Bolkestein wants to legalize all drugs). (more…)

Did you catch those violent scenes on the news this past weekend? Sure, there are violent scenes going on at any given time at many places throughout the world, but these were headlined by the spectacular shooting-down of a police helicopter. (Remember the video of that?) At least 16 dead, with many burning vehicles, as heavily-armed police moved against the local drug-mafia in the favelas, or slums, of Rio de Janeiro.

Wait a second . . . isn’t that the same city that just recently was awarded the right to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games? Indeed it is, as Gerhard Dilger points out in his brief commentary-piece in Berlin’s Tageszeitung or taz: Alarm in the Olympic-city. That sort of bloodshed just won’t do while the Olympics are going on, but at this stage it’s difficult to imagine how it can be stopped: the author cites casualties of 100 people per month at the hands of Rio’s militarized police.

Well, Dilger concludes that it’s simply time for Brazilian politicians, from President Lula da Silva on down, to start imagining harder. A cheap answer is simply to call off the police and let the drug-gangs operate unhindered; while he does not go so far as to advocate that, he does urge thinking hard about how this sort of repression is responsible for making the drug trade so lucrative in the first place. In effect – although he does not state it explicitly – he is advocating drug legalization for Brazil.

At the same time, there needs to be a massive infusion of public investment in those favelas to produce schools, hospitals, public housing, etc. to address the wide gap between rich and poor in Brazilian society that results in the illegal activity that prompts such violence. World cities know anyway when they submit their bids to host the Olympic Games that they need to be ready to make tremendous investments in supporting infrastructure should they succeed in winning them. Dilger asserts here that not only is the same is true for Rio, but that hosting the 2016 Games is a Riesenchance – a gigantic chance – to summon the political will even to go beyond Olympic facility investments to undertake initiatives designed to heal the very real clefts remaining in Brazilian society.

Maybe it’s Euro-giddiness from the recent warm and sunny spring weather: this weblog seems to be building up a thread on the subject of soft-drug use and its combating by local authorities. A few days ago I discussed here the new pot-sniffing mini-chopper the Dutch authorities had come up with to locate and destroy marijuana farms. Now I’ve run across an interesting article in the Danish press about Copenhagen’s famous drug-peddling “Christiania” quarter.

For those not in the know, “Freetown Christiania” is a small section of the Danish capital, a former military-barracks area, which was occupied by squatters beginning in 1971, who soon declared themselves to be self-governing there. Naturally, the local and national authorities have never conceded any sort of full independence; rather, a set of extraordinary agreements has been worked out over the years that divides the functions this neighborhood can undertake for itself (including paying taxes for public utilities and trash-removal) and those which the Danish authorities are still responsible for. Still, it is commonly assumed that those authorities would much prefer to shut the “Freetown” down at some point and return it completely to local and national Danish law, just like any other neighborhood in the country, if only some way could be found that would not bring with it massive, messy civil resistance from the residents.

One particular bone of contention between “Christianites” and the authorities has precisely been recreational drugs. (more…)

These are weird times; governments around the world are doing some strange things, generally in response to urgent budgetary pressures. You might have read in the New York Times about how the Australian navy is about to let its sailors go off on a two-month leave – the report was even on the homepage of that newspaper’s website for a time. And now word comes from the Dutch newspaper Trouw: Athens government to free half of its prisoners.

(It’s true that articles of this sort referencing happenings in another European country would usually cause me to go to that other country’s on-line press to seek more first-hand reports there, but in this case all I can do is plead “It’s all Greek to me!”)

That’s around 6,000 convicted criminals that the Greek authorities are planning to release, pending approval by parliament, according to an announcement by Sotiris Hatzigakis, the Greek Justice Minister. But there may be another 1,500 added to that if he also is allowed to institute another measure reducing the allowable duration of what the Trouw report (credited to the ANP press agency) terms “temporary custody,” which I interpret to mean pre-trial detention – so at least many of those added 1,500 may not be actual lawbreakers.

Why do they want to do this? Overcrowding. If 6,000 is the half, then that means that there are around 12,000 inmates in Greek jails, which the article reports have an official capacity of only 7,500. And how can they be sure that the jails won’t just fill up to bursting again? Well, it seems that drugs laws in Greece are somewhat stricter than the EU norm. (Who would have thought it?) “In the long run,” as the Trouw article puts it (op de lange termijn), the parliament is supposed to take up the task of adjusting those laws accordingly.