T<\/span>he Netherlands is coming to resemble a \u201cnarco-state\u201d where illegal drug networks operate with impunity. At least, that\u2019s according to a report from the Dutch police union, the Nederlandse Politie Bond (NPB<\/u>), submitted to the country\u2019s lower house of parliament last month.<\/p>\n Entitled\u00a0\u201cNoodkreet recherche!\u201d\u00a0<\/i>(Help, Detective!),\u00a0the report<\/a>\u00a0portrays a dangerously overstretched police force and a citizenry increasingly at the mercy of criminals.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the last 25 years I have seen small dealers grow into large entrepreneurs with good contacts in politics and into so-called respected investors,\u201d the report quotes one detective. The NPB conducted interviews with some 400 police detectives over the past year for the report,\u00a0according to the Netherlands Times.<\/a><\/p>\n The report claims that detectives only get to address about one in five cases due to a lack of capacity. Forensic, surveillance and digital teams are reserved for violent crimes, while other cases languish. And in the meantime, \u201csmall criminals develop into wealthy entrepreneurs who establish themselves in the hospitality industry, housing market, middle class, travel agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Netherlands fulfills many characteristics of a narco-state,\u201d the report declares. \u201cDetectives see a parallel economy emerge.\u201d<\/p>\n The report admits that official figures indicate that crime is on a downward trend \u2014 there has been a 25 percent drop in the number of recorded crimes over the past nine years. But it quotes officers who say many victims have stopped reporting incidents. The report asserts that 3.5 million crimes now go unregistered every year.<\/p>\n This will provide very convenient propaganda for\u00a0the mounting\u00a0backlash\u00a0<\/a>against the Dutch\u00a0gedoogbeleid<\/i>\u00a0(tolerance policy) on the sale of cannabis in coffee shops.<\/p>\n As\u00a0The Guardian notes<\/a>, critics claim the policy has turned the Netherlands into a major European hub for the trafficking of drugs and people. A majority of the ecstasy taken in Europe and the U.S. is said to originate in labs in the Netherlands, which are increasingly run by Moroccan gangs also involved in cannabis production. Rotterdam has become a major transfer point for cocaine, according to Europol. And Amsterdam\u2019s police chief, Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg, claimed last month that his force now spends up to to 70 percent of its time attempting to combat gang-related hit-jobs, with young men were willing to carry out assassinations for as little as \u20ac3,000.<\/p>\n Indeed, there have been some spectacularly grisly drug-related murders in the Amsterdam area, recalling some of the most\u00a0gruesome incidents<\/a>\u00a0of narco-violence in Mexico over the past years. In March 2016,\u00a0The Guardian<\/a>\u00a0reported that a fight between two rival drug networks that had claimed at least 16 lives over the past two years in the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain.<\/p>\n You can sense battle-lines being drawn here. Dutch groups like the Union for the Abolition of Cannabis Prohibition are making headway in their effort to actually legalize the herb. This would resolve\u00a0the fundamental contradiction of the Dutch model<\/a>: coffeeshops are allowed to sell cannabis, but cultivation remains illegal.<\/p>\n CGTN America<\/a>\u00a0reports that this year, a group of municipal governments in the Netherlands will take part in trials to oversee cannabis production and directly supply coffee shops.\u00a0The Guardian<\/a>\u00a0reported in December that some 30 firms are hoping for license to produce for the municipalities. The plan has the approval of the new Dutch government led by Mark Rutte \u2014 a conservative who the last time he was in power a few years ago was\u00a0pushing a crackdown<\/a>\u00a0<\/a>on the coffee houses.<\/p>\n So any attempt to exploit the police report to attack the tolerance policy will face an obvious retort: there\u2019s a case that\u00a0greater<\/i>\u00a0daylight for the cannabis economy, rather than a return to intolerance, is what will undermine the narco-gangs. There is growing evidence for this from around the world.<\/p>\n In January, a\u00a0new study\u00a0<\/a>published in\u00a0The Economic Journal\u00a0found a reduction in violent crime in U.S. states along the Mexican border over the past 20 years, and especially in those counties along the international line. The authors linked this trend to the embrace of medical marijuana programs in all these states over that period \u2014 and in the case of\u00a0California<\/a>, now outright legalization. Therefore, it appears that the roots of burgeoning narco-violence in the Netherlands are likely unrelated to the tolerance policy, except inasmuch as it doesn\u2019t go far enough.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/b>\u00a0do you think the Netherlands should legalize cannabis cultivation?<\/p>\n The post Dutch Police Say Netherlands Is a \u2018Narco State\u2019<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The Dutch police union has released a lurid report asserting that the Netherlands is becoming a \u201cnarco-state,\u201d with authorities unable to keep ahead of criminal enterprises bringing illegal drugs into the country. And there have in fact been some recent cases of grisly narco-violence in the Netherlands. Opponents of theContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,380,80,170,2836],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24262"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24262"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24263,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24262\/revisions\/24263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Dutch Police Say Netherlands Is a \u2018Narco State\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"