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Louk Hulsman, Cannabis Tribunal, Like the example of the Russell Tribunal in the fast penalising condition in Holland, this was organised to look at the facts instead of the fear of cannabis use. The Hague, Holland, December 1 2008.
I came to listen to what was said here, I had no intention of saying much myself,
but people have asked me to say something. In that case I may want to speak about two things.
One is...
[chairwoman] Could you talk a bit more into the microphone...? Is it on?
[Louk] Yes it is on. Can everyone hear me now?
One is: in the commission Hulsman (the Commission that researched ways to deal with drugs in Dutch Policy)
a very diverse group of people talked about drugs, specifically about cannabis, but not about cannabis alone, also about other types of drugs.
In Holland the use of drugs was never really criminalised.
The common policy was to prevent a strong illegal market from taking shape.
For that reason drug use was tolerated to a great extent.
Those existing laws were there to do something when that was needed, and to do as little as possible.
That changed in the sixties and seventies when the police in Amsterdam started to use the anti-drug legislation in regard to cannabis, in their fight with the Provos. (a Dutch anti authorian group of young people in the sixties)
And not only in relation to cannabis but also in relation to LSD and other drugs.
They started to use the legislation in the conflict they had with the Provo's.
They persecuted those cases.
The courts, the public office and the judges thought in different ways about the cases that were brought before them.
Some were of the opinion that there was a problem that they had to deal with.
Others, actually the majority, thought that these were not the type of cases one should try in penal law.
The police were bringing in more and more of these cases and the public office were dismissing these cases on a large scale.
Just a fraction of those cases came to trial.
Then the commission was established (commission Hulsman 1971) to look into this problem and
that commission had the impression, expressed the opinion that in itself -
and they did that typically about the drugs that were used by Dutch people in Holland,
not about the *** that also existed in Holland
but was actually exclusively used in the circle of American soldiers that were on leave in Amsterdam
Our advice dealt mainly with those drugs that were in use in Holland, but
there was also attention to what happened in that respect in North America.
Our conclusion was that you should avoid giving an important role to penal law in this problem area and
most of all one should avoid getting into an American type of drug policy.
The commission Baan, (installed by the government, 1972) not in such a strong sense as in our commission, agreed to that idea.
When it was dealt with in the Cabinet, with van Agt as Minister of Justice,
belonging to a confessional party, the major part of the parliament,
I should say most of the politicians were of an opinion that
one should not give an important role to penal law in this complete area of drug policy.
Because of that, the decision came forth from the debates that took place between different ministries,
to write a letter to the United Nations, that we were of the opinion that
especially cannabis should not have such a part in that treaty. (UN Treaty on drugs, 30 march 1961).
People seem to have forgotten that:
The Dutch government wrote a letter that they did not agree with the prohibition of cannabis.
And that letter was tucked away in a drawer,
like all the letters that were fundamentally discussing drug policy were put away in a drawer.
People said of those letters: yes, okay, we will think about that, but we don't have any budget for that now.
And if we have a budget, then we might want to do a conference about that.
But there was a lobby against getting the budget for that conference, so no budget was approved.
And then, of course, at a certain moment the governments had forgotten that they had written such a letter.
Because the American government had also written such a letter, under the Carter administration.
And those letters only became an issue when there was another government, which would not write such a letter.
That is one issue in this discussion that I consider very important that it should not be forgotten,
that Holland in an early stage has said that it considered the placing of cannabis in these treaties was misplaced.
The second thing I want to say is: people are all the time speaking of criminality.
And it is being done in a way as if criminality is something wrong.
Criminality in itself is of course not wrong at all.
It was criminal not to turn in Jews, it was criminal to commit homosexual acts; very many things were criminal.
So criminality doesn't say anything about the question of whether something is good or wrong.
And now I'm speaking from my profession, I am a professor in Penal Law and criminology and I know all about these matters,
I am now 85 years of age and I worked for a long period in legislation
and I know what is possible and what is not possible.
Listen, the whole issue of penalising drugs has to do with religion.
Religions have rules about what you eat and drink,
not all the religions, but many and certainly the desert religions,
have rules about what you eat and drink, and when you should do that and when you cannot.
So we pretend to have a secular state form.
And in a secular state there is no place for issues that have to do with religion and with other opinions.
The whole idea that the state tells you what to eat and what to drink
and how to prepare it is indeed to my deepest conviction utter madness!
About what you eat and drink you consult a cook and in some cases a health expert and doctors,
we are all in the first place,
even in the communist dictatorial states people had the freedom to eat and drink what they wanted
and the state did not prescribe that for them
But, look, that's the idea: it would please me if nobody talks about criminality for the remainder of this conference.
You can talk about things that are good or wrong, then you know what you are talking about.
So you don't talk about criminality any more, but you talk about things that are good or profitable or not profitable.
And then you than always realise if something belongs to the territory of the state, when you are a secular state.