Dutch consider 'magic' mushroom ban

Tuesday, 27 March 2007 19:37

The Netherlands, well known for its liberal policies on soft drugs like marijuana, may follow Ireland and ban the sale of hallucinogenic mushrooms. 

Recently, a teenage tourist in the Netherlands died after jumping off a bridge during a trip.

The Irish government banned the sale and possession of hallucinogenic mushrooms under similar circumstances last year after a Dublin man fell to his death at a Halloween party in 2005.

Dutch Health Minister Ab Klink ordered a special study into the 'magic' mushrooms and their effects Tuesday. A majority of lawmakers in the Netherlands is in favour of a ban, according to the Dutch news agency ANP.

Both dried and fresh mushrooms can be bought freely in so-called 'smart shops' even though 'actively' dried mushrooms are technically illegal.

Amsterdam, the Dutch capital, has become an international tourist destination because of its tolerance for soft drug use and government-regulated coffee shops that legally sell small amounts of cannabis.

RTE Dutch News Service RTE(with accent mark over E)

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003760323_dutch24.html

Sunday, June 24, 2007 - Page updated at 02:01 AM

Dutch seek to rein in vice

By Molly Moore

The Washington Post

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — For years, W.B. Kranendonk was a lone ranger in Dutch politics — the editor of an orthodox Christian newspaper in a nation that has legalized prostitution, euthanasia, abortion and same-sex marriage and allows the personal use of marijuana.

Today, with an orthodox Christian political party in the government for the first time, and with immigration anxieties fueling a national search for identity, the country that has been the world's most socially liberal political laboratory is rethinking its anything-goes policies.

And suddenly, Kranendonk no longer seems so all alone.

"People in high political circles are saying it can't be good to have a society so liberal that everything is allowed," said Kranendonk, editor of Reformist Daily and an increasingly influential voice that resonates in the shifting mainstream of Dutch public opinion.

In cities across the Netherlands, mayors and town councils are closing down shops where marijuana is sold, rolled and smoked. Municipalities are shuttering the brothels where prostitutes have been allowed to ply their trade legally. Parliament is considering a ban on the sale of hallucinogenic "magic mushrooms." Orthodox Christian members of Parliament have introduced a bill that would allow civil officials with moral objections to refuse to perform gay marriages. And Dutch authorities are trying to curtail the activities of an abortion-rights group that assists women in neighboring countries where abortions are illegal.

The effort to rein in the Netherlands' famed social liberties is not limited to the small, newly empowered Christian Union party, which holds two of the 16 ministries in the coalition government formed this year. Increasingly, politicians from the more center-left Labor Party are among the most outspoken proponents of closing some brothels and marijuana shops, known here as "coffee shops."

"Has the Netherlands changed? Yes," said Frank de Wolf, a Labor Party member of the Amsterdam City Council. "There is not only a different mood among our people and politicians but there are different problems now."

The Netherlands is going through the same racial, ethnic and religious metamorphosis as the rest of Western Europe: Large influxes of black, Arab and Muslim immigrants are changing the social complexion of an overwhelmingly white, Christian nation struggling with its loss of homogeneity.

But here those anxieties are exacerbated by alarm over the international crime organizations that have infiltrated the country's prostitution and drug trades, the increasing prevalence of trafficking in women and children across its borders, and dismay over the Netherlands' image as an international tourist destination for drugs and sexual debauchery.

"In the past, we looked at legal prostitution as a women's liberation issue; now it's looked at as exploitation of women and should be stopped," said de Wolf.

He said Amsterdam's police force is overwhelmed and ill-equipped to fight the sophisticated foreign organized-crime networks operating in the city. Laws designed to regulate prostitution and brothel operators have instead opened the trade to criminal gangs, according to de Wolf and other city officials.

"Amsterdam has a reputation that you can do everything here," de Wolf said. "That's not the way I want people to look at Amsterdam."

Those same concerns have prompted some cities to bar tourists from their marijuana and hashish shops. Some localities now require patrons of the shops to show Dutch identity cards to gain entry, and a new nationwide law forbids the sale of alcohol in shops that sell pot and hash.

Some lawmakers have proposed requiring the shops to warn their customers about the dangers of cannabis, mimicking the warning labels on tobacco and alcohol products.

Ivo Opstelten, the mayor of Rotterdam, the second-largest Dutch city, announced this month that he will close all marijuana shops within 250 yards of a school — nearly half of the city's 62 shops.

Michael Veling, 52, proprietor of an Amsterdam coffee shop where a joint sells for $5.50, said politicians are looking for any excuse to scale back the sale of soft drugs.

James Kennedy, professor of contemporary history at the Free University of Amsterdam, describes the attitude as a national "weariness with moral squalor — the Dutch have grown tired of it and unwilling to put up with it."

Leaders of the Christian Union say they are not pushing to banish legalized prostitution or soft drugs. And no officials are discussing rollbacks on same-sex marriage, euthanasia or abortion, even though the party opposes all three.

Instead, the party and other leaders who agree with some of its stances are "copying from the United States," according to Rebecca Gomperts, founder of Women on Waves, an organization that provides Internet counseling on abortions and charters ships to provide off-shore abortion advice to women in European countries that do not allow abortions.

"They are chopping away at the edges so that people don't notice," Gomperts said, "resetting the norm of what is accepted practice."

http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=19&story_id=41610

Expatica July 6. 2007 Holland

Amsterdam closes 2 "smart shops"
6 July 2007

AMSTERDAM – The municipality of Amsterdam has closed two "smart shops" on the Spuistraat with immediate effect. An inspection found that the shops Innerspace and The Magic Mushroom Gallery were acting in violation of drug legislation, the city announced on Thursday. The shops are favourites with backpackers looking for hallucinogenic mushrooms.

Inspectors found dried mushrooms containing the prohibited substance psilocyne at these two shops. This classifies the mushrooms as hard drugs. The party drug GHB was also found at the Magic Mushroom Gallery.

The municipality of Amsterdam is working with police, the health inspectorate, the tax authority and the Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority in carrying out inspections at these shops that cell certain types of soft drugs and drug paraphernalia.

Two shops on the Nieuwendijk were forced to close in March when it emerged that they were not operating in accordance with the law. Inspectors found weapons, amphetamines and chocolate bars containing hallucinogenic mushrooms at the premises.

A report from the regional health authority GGD in Amsterdam indicates that there has been a sharp rise in the number of incidents involving hallucinogenic mushrooms over the past three years. Young foreign tourists in particular have become ill after taking the drugs.

[Copyright Expatica News + ANP 2007]

Subject: Dutch news