The Sunday Times
(London)
February 01, 2004
Dutch law could
unleash cocaine flood in Britain
by Justin
Sparks
A DECISION by the Dutch government to decriminalise
the
smuggling of hard drugs could leave Britain vulnerable to a flood
of
cheap cocaine.
Customs officers are allowing traffickers caught at
Schiphol airport,
Amsterdam, with less than 3kg of cocaine to go free. The
only
penalty they face is the confiscation of their drugs.
In the
first phase of a policy that could soon be extended to other
hard drugs, the
liberal measures are being applied to 35 so-called
"cocaine flights" a week
from the Caribbean.
Last year police caught 2,176 smugglers from the
region and
seized six tons of the drug. But from now on, traffickers no
longer
have to worry about hefty prison terms or even arrest.
The
policy may prove even more controversial than Holland's
infamous "coffee
shops", where soft drugs such as cannabis have
been sold openly for
decades.
The Dutch authorities claim the measure will allow them to
divert
money spent prosecuting offenders into drug seizures.
However,
critics in neighbouring countries, including Britain, fear it will
lead to
a boom in the number of people ready to act as "mules" for
drug
cartels.
The National Drug Prevention Alliance in Britain has
warned that
the policy amounts to a capitulation by the police
with
consequences that could spin out of control.
"This won't just hit
the UK badly. It will affect the whole of Europe,"
said David Raynes, a
former chief narcotics investigator for
Customs and Excise. "Holland is the
drugs warehouse of Europe
and by not controlling its problem it's creating an
infection that will
spread to all the countries around."
In Germany
the street value of cocaine has already fallen from ?150
(£102) a gram to
just ?50 (£34), raising the prospect of a sharp rise
in the number of
addicts. The Dutch government has ignored a plea
from Otto Schily, the German
interior minister, to toughen rather
than weaken its
deterrent.
However, Ivo Hommes, a spokesman for the Dutch justice
ministry,
said the initiative could save millions spent on prosecuting
and
jailing offenders, allowing more funds to go into the detection
and
confiscation of drugs. "Locking up thousands of smugglers
doesn't
solve the problem. There will always be more of them," he
said.
"We've been honest enough to admit that we only manage to stop
15%
of the drugs coming in, so we are trying something new."
A leaked
ministry memorandum, however, has suggested that the
policy was adopted
because the prosecution service was
overburdened. It emphasised that
drug-related arrests should not
be permitted to "block the justice
system".
Britain's National Criminal Intelligence Service is said to be
eyeing
the policy "warily".