The interesting thing is that although the relative success with decriminalization of drugs in The Netherlands was one of the examples that inspired many other countries to liberalize their policies, The Netherlands itself did not make any progress at all in the last thirty years and even reversed some policies.
Marijuana is still officially illegal, coffeeshops cannot run a 100% legal business and small growers have been systematically persecuted. Only big, criminally run enterprises remain with the typical organized crime problems as a result.
It's no longer legal to amphetamines-related drugs at electronic parties and related drug-related deaths because of too strong or impure XTC are on a rise. Magic mushrooms are banned from sale because some tourists in Amsterdam had bad trips. And there was this story about a man slaughtering his dog that was awfully similar to those Marijuana stories in the 20's: https://www.expatica.com/nl/news/country-news/Man-kills-dog-..., amongst other "sudden" mushroom scare stories in the press.
Although because of lack of actual knowledge about these kind of substances allowed the sale of magic truffels to continue everywhere where before the mushrooms were sold, the magic mushroom scare stories in the media suddenly stopped.
It really saddens me that even more successful and better regulated policies from other countries are not followed in The Netherlands.
Marijuana is still officially illegal, coffeeshops cannot run a 100% legal business and small growers have been systematically persecuted. Only big, criminally run enterprises remain with the typical organized crime problems as a result.
It's no longer legal to amphetamines-related drugs at electronic parties and related drug-related deaths because of too strong or impure XTC are on a rise. Magic mushrooms are banned from sale because some tourists in Amsterdam had bad trips. And there was this story about a man slaughtering his dog that was awfully similar to those Marijuana stories in the 20's: https://www.expatica.com/nl/news/country-news/Man-kills-dog-..., amongst other "sudden" mushroom scare stories in the press.
Although because of lack of actual knowledge about these kind of substances allowed the sale of magic truffels to continue everywhere where before the mushrooms were sold, the magic mushroom scare stories in the media suddenly stopped.
It really saddens me that even more successful and better regulated policies from other countries are not followed in The Netherlands.