THE Dutch EU Presidency boasts that such is the pressure of the Union's own business that, unusually, the cabinet has decided not to place matters of specifically Dutch concern on the agenda.
Europe's agenda is the Netherlands' agenda," the Prime Minister, Mr Wim Kok, told a group of journalists in The Hague this week for a briefing on the presidency.
But the opportunity was not allowed to pass for putting the record straight on the vexed issue of "coffee shops".
Belgium and France have led the charge against Dutch toleration of the use of cannabis which, they say, in the absence of frontier controls is a matter of serious common concern. Others, the Irish included, in a bid to give a stronger law and order flavour to the Union and particularly its Dublin summit, were unwilling to engage in politically controversial distinctions between hard and soft drugs.
In a passionate contribution to the last justice ministers' meeting, the Greek minister, a former police officer and magistrate - "a colonel, no doubt", one diplomat was heard to mutter - spoke of his disgust and shock at having to pick his way through the bodies of spaced out drug addicts in Amsterdam's Dam Square. In his experience these people had to be dealt with firmly, he said. Only repressive means would work.
In the end the joint package of anti drugs measures was agreed at the summit, although proposals to "approximate" member states' anti addiction policies were fudged by a clause allowing member states to maintain national policies.
The Dutch case, a pragmatic one based on public health criteria and proven results, is worth hearing.
In truth the Dutch legislation on fighting drug addiction and trafficking is broadly unremarkable in European terms. It ranges from the traditional sentences for possession or trafficking of both hard and soft drugs to the confiscation of assets derived from the drugs trade and even bans possession of "precursors", key ingredients required for ecstasy or crack production. The govern meat recently doubled sentences for production of Dutch hemp, nederwiet.
In clamping down on hard drugs and trafficking in substantial quantities of soft drugs the Dutch are no less zealous than any of their European counterparts.
What is different, however, is the explicitness with which they admit that they do not wish to expend resources on the prosecution of individual cannabis users or small scale distributors. Discretion is given to the prosecuting authorities in this regard in explicit guidelines which regulate the way cannabis is sold in coffee shops. They may not sell to those under 18, or advertise, and will be prosecuted if there is suspicion that hard drugs are sold on the premises.
In the face of international pressure and in a bid to reduce "drug tourism" the government recently cut from 30g to 5g the amount which can be sold and closed a number of coffee shops (although there are still 1,290 left).
The main aim of the policy is to separate the market for cannabis from that for heroin, cocaine and harder drugs.
The Dutch argue that there is no evidence whatsoever of a physical property in the cannabis predisposing its user to switch to harder drugs. What may occur, however, is that if a user integrates socially into a culture where hard and soft drugs are available together, cannabis may become a stepping stone to abuse of harder drugs. The challenge is thus a social one, best tackled by separating the markets.
In the Netherlands some 600,000 people are estimated to regularly use cannabis, about 4.6 per cent of the population over 12 years old. An Amsterdam survey suggests a quarter of the population has at some stage tried soft drugs.
While the government runs educational programmes advising against soft drug use there is, it says, no conclusive evidence of brain damage, harmful effects on blood circulation, immune systems or reproduction.
But reduced reaction speeds and ability to concentrate as well as diminished short term memory have been observed. Alcohol is at least as dangerous, almost certainly more, because of its addictive properties.
"Separation of the markets does work," the Minister for Health, Dr Els Borst Eilers, insists, pointing to the reality that the Netherlands' record on hard drug addiction is better than most of its European partners.
The number of addicts at 1.7 per thousand of population compares very favourably to neighbouring countries: Belgium, 1.8; France, 2.4; Denmark, 2.0; Britain, 2.6. (Ireland has a figure of 0.6 per thousand, but a quite different demography).
Deaths from drug addiction at 2.4 per million are of a completely different order of magnitude to France (9.5), Spain (27.1) and Germany (20), reflecting the emphasis on treating the issue as a health problem rather than a criminal one.
The Dutch have pioneered both extensive methadone programmes to wean addicts off hard drugs and needle exchange programmes. The result is that only 10 per cent of AIDS patients are intravenous drug users compared to an EU average of 40 per cent.
Dr Borst Eilers maintains that, in practice, other countries' police and prosecuting authorities are coming to recognise that the criminalisation of soft drug use is counterproductive but are unwilling to persuade a sceptical public of that reality.
