Pubdate: 06 May 2001
Source: Commercial Appeal (TN)
Copyright: 2001 The Commercial Appeal
Contact:  http://www.gomemphis.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/95

HOLLAND'S LAWS DRAW TOURISTS, CRITICISM

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Smoke billowed through an open window and
out into the street as Craig Alves gulped another hit of marijuana
from a blue bong.

"I think they should take pot smokers out of jail and leave jail to
the true criminals," said Alves, 21, a New York college student on
vacation in this European city of sin.

Tourists from around the world come to Amsterdam to do things outlawed
or severely restricted back home. Here, in the land of tolerance,
marijuana and hashish - both technically illegal - are openly sold and
smoked with official approval.

Prostitution not only is allowed, it's such a significant tourist
attraction that the local police hand out glossy brochures outlining
the do's and don'ts of Amsterdam's notorious Red Light District.
Guideline No. 6: "If you visit one of the women, we would like to
remind you, they are not always women."

Want to see a live sex show? No problem. Theaters in the Red Light
District offer food, drinks and a variety of stage performances
featuring couples and individuals engaging in any of a number of acts.

Controversy has raged for years over the Dutch approach to vice. Both
sides of the drug legalization debate in the United States often point
to the Netherlands as an example of everything that's good and bad in
a government drug policy.

Passions also run deep when it comes to the Dutch handling of the
world's oldest profession.

"Most people have the wrong impression of prostitution," said Belinda,
a slender blond woman who lounged in leather boots and a skimpy bikini
as she waited for patrons from her perch in a large picture window
overlooking a canal.

The Netherlands allows prostitution to thrive under certain conditions
in its big cities, where it is subject to government regulation and
taxes.

"If I had a girl who wanted to do this, I think I'd kill her," Belinda
said. "But I like this job. There's a lot of freedom."

Critics, however, consider the Netherlands's vice policies tolerance
run amok. The Dutch stance not only is irresponsible, they charge, it
is jeopardizing public safety in other countries by fostering the
growth of illegal markets.

In recent years Amsterdam has gained a reputation among American and
European law enforcement authorities as a center for gun running,
child pornography and drug smuggling. That image stretches all the way
to Memphis.

A Dutch woman was arrested in March at Memphis International Airport
for allegedly attempting to smuggle nearly 7 pounds of Ecstasy pills
into the city. She arrived on a direct flight from Amsterdam.

In April, a Dutch man who had flown from Amsterdam to Memphis with
more than 6,000 Ecstasy tablets opted to go to federal prison rather
than return to Holland, where he said he feared retribution from drug
dealers.

Despite international pressure to rethink its policies, the government
here insists it's sticking to its approach. That includes the Dutch
policy of tolerating the purchase and use of small amounts of "soft"
drugs like marijuana while aggressively prosecuting dealers selling
cocaine, Ecstasy, heroin and other hard drugs.

"Now, more and more countries are following our example," said B.M.
Kuik, press officer for the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and
Sport. Several European countries have decriminalized marijuana use in
recent years, and some also have followed the Dutch lead in exchanging
needles and treating heroin addicts with methadone, a synthetic substitute.

The Netherlands also stands by its prostitution policy.

"The prostitutes in Holland are controlled by doctors," Kuik said.
"Safe sex is priority No. 1 here."

The Red Light District

The girls wait along the alleyways and narrow cobbled lanes winding
all around Oude Kerk, Amsterdam's oldest church.

They are dressed in leather thongs, fishnet and colorful bikinis. They
are every conceivable body type, color and ethnic background, ranging
in age from teenager to middle age or older. As the police brochure
warns, some are men in drag, too.

Almost without exception, they stand or sit behind large, clear
windows generally trimmed in red neon.

"I've been doing this two months now," said a brunette who cracked
open her glass door to speak with a reporter. She called herself
Carla. She seemed sorely out of place.

She wore black plastic-rimmed glasses and said she was an unemployed
schoolteacher from Trieste, Italy, down on her luck. "I go back to my
work in September," she said. By then, Carla said, she would have
enough money and be done with prostitution for good.

Hers is a common story in the Red Light District, the
Netherlands's showcase of government-regulated prostitution that aims to
safeguard the health, welfare and rights of prostitutes as well as
customers.

In Amsterdam there are few visible streetwalkers, the hard-luck, often
drug-addicted prostitutes that plague the streets of many cities of
the world. Authorities here limit streetwalkers to a few zones outside
the Red Light District.

Most visible prostitutes work behind windows they rent from brothel
owners, providing a seemingly safe, weather-controlled workplace. The
brothel system here vaguely resembles legalized prostitution in
Nevada, where street-walking is illegal and some 30 brothels operate
in 10 rural towns. But there are more options for prostitutes in the
Netherlands.

Some prostitutes work for escort services or in sex clubs, elegant
nightclubs where patrons pay a cover charge to mingle with the staff
or retire to a private room.

The country's 20,000 to 30,000 "sex workers" can join a union, The Red
Thread, that pursues grievances with brothel and club owners, helps
members obtain social services and protects their civil rights.

The image-conscious Prostitution Information Center, a neat, well-lit
tourist shop near Oude Kerk, sells T-shirts, literature and lotions
and tries to educate the public. "Maybe prostitution is in a dark
corner of society, but that's exactly why we want to talk about it in
an open way," said Mariska Majoor, a former prostitute who runs the
center.

A major point for Majoor: Safe sex. That includes condom use and
avoiding "crazy things," she said. The government operates a clinic
in the district where prostitutes can receive free screening for
sexually transmitted diseases. Though checkups aren't mandatory,
Majoor said prostitutes are encouraged to come in every few weeks,
and most do.

Still, there are undeniable health risks. The prevalence of AIDS and
HIV in the Netherlands was among the highest in western Europe, though
considerably less than rates in France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and
Switzerland, according to a 2000 United Nations report.

AIDS is particularly acute among Dutch streetwalkers and drug addicts.
While details are incomplete, UN statistics suggest the prevalence of
the AIDS virus is seven times higher among Holland's regulated sex
workers than among the country's general population. At the same time,
Dutch sex workers had lower rates of HIV than counterparts in France,
Portugal and Spain, where prostitution also is legal.

Recent legislation gave the government more power to enter brothels to
enforce health and safety standards and check for criminal activity.
But the legislation underscores some of the contradictions and
shortcomings of the Dutch prostitution system.

Prostitution has been legal for decades here, yet brothels became
legal only last year. Before that, authorities looked the other way
and allowed brothels to operate under the time-honored code of
tolerance. The ambiguous legal status allowed underworld operators to
entice numbers of illegal immigrants into prostitution. Studies
suggested that large numbers of sex workers were coerced into the business.

Aiming to reduce coercion, limit the use of underage workers and
protect the prostitution market from criminals dealing in arms and
drugs, the Netherlands legalized brothels and imposed stiffer
sentences for lawbreakers.

Still, the Netherlands's anything-goes environment has cast the
country in a negative light in some corners of the world.

In 1998, police here uncovered a child pornography ring that peddled
images to clients in Europe and the United States. The New York Times
reported in December that Amsterdam has become a center for Turkish
and Yugoslav gangs smuggling immigrants, drugs and weapons such as
grenade launchers believed destined for terrorists.

Some Dutch authorities who've become sensitive to that image stress
the orderliness of the Red Light District. "Eighty to 90 percent of
the people who walk here are tourists," said Willem Schild, a former
police officer who until recently walked a beat here and is involved
in public awareness of drug and sex policies. "It's totally not
representative of the rest of Holland."

The narrow streets are crowded nightly with tourists. In March, Craig
Murray and several friends from Great Britain enjoyed a night out
here. "Everyone who says they're not interested is probably a liar,"
said Murray, 30, a native of Scotland, who is living in London.

Still, Murray couldn't help but wonder: How much exploitation goes on
here? Ethnic minorities regularly appear in the windows, but they seem
to be gradually replaced by others during the higher-priced evening
hours.

"The one thing I find very sad about it is during the day there are a
lot of ethnic minorities working in the windows," Murray said. "It's
the only way that they can make money."

Legally Selling An Illegal Drug

Technically, dope is illegal here. Yet marijuana is sold and smoked,
with official approval, in numbers of so-called "coffeehouses" in
Amsterdam under a legal loophole known as the expediency principle.

The principle allows prosecution and arrest to be suspended when
individual users buy 5 grams (less than a quarter ounce) or less at a
coffeehouse.

The Dutch thinking is that if authorities can isolate the market for
marijuana - often considered a "gateway" drug to harder substances in
the United States - they can keep users away from drug dealers who
also peddle hard drugs like cocaine, LSD or heroin. Coffeehouses,
licensed and regulated by the government, are forbidden from selling
hard drugs or selling any substances to minors.

"The expediency principle is applied . . . to separate the users'
markets from hard and soft drugs and keep young people who experiment
with cannabis away from hard drugs," explains a policy document by the
Dutch Ministry of Justice.

Lest there be any confusion about the commitment to that policy, the
document also states: "The Dutch firmly believe in the freedom of the
individual, with the government playing no more than a background role
in religious or moral issues."

The Dutch say their system works, but it is widely
criticized.

In 1998, then White House drug czar Barry McCaffrey called the Dutch
system "an unmitigated disaster," saying illegal drug traffickers are
exploiting the country's tolerant system and that America should avoid
modeling its drug policies after the Netherlands.

More recently, controversy has stirred regarding Ecstasy, the fad
feel-good nightclub drug. Because the government here largely views
drug use as a health concern rather than a criminal matter, Dutch
youths who illicitly obtain Ecstasy for personal use can obtain
government chemical tests to screen their pills for harmful impurities.

Authorities have closed numbers of coffeehouses for illegally selling
hard drugs. Meanwhile, some owners complain that a Catch-22 forces
even above-board coffeehouse operators to deal with the black market.
Coffeehouses can keep no more than 500 grams of marijuana in stock.
But when business is brisk and supplies are low, sometimes they buy
more - from dealers who, legally, can't sell it anyway.

"Your supplier is your criminal connection. This is the two-faced
nature of it," complained Sander Weduwer, assistant manager at
Homegrown Fantasy, where patrons smoke bongs (a smoking apparatus) and
joints surrounded by brightly painted walls and laid-back music.

Both inside and outside the Red Light District, the Netherlands
employs a similar live-and-let-live outlook when dealing with the
country's weighty drug-addiction problem.

Public clinics here regularly supply methadone to hard-core addicts,
and the government recently has been experimenting with giving heroin
to junkies. Public benefits include a lower crime rate because junkies
are less inclined to steal to finance their next fix, police say.

Despite criticism, the Dutch system has its influence. Belgium, France
and Portugal recently made moves to decriminalize marijuana, and, in
the United States, California voters passed an initiative last fall to
provide treatment - not jail - to nonviolent first- and second-time
drug offenders.

"People looked at the Netherlands and said we couldn't do things
right," said Martin Hommenga, spokesman for Amsterdam's Municipal
Health Service, which operates the famed "Methadone Bus" that supplies
synthetic heroin to addicts throughout the city. "Now, you're seeing a
change all over in drug policies."