The Netherlands Tolerance Finally Finds Its Limits

By Frederick Painton

Ed van Thijn considers himself a tolerant man, but he readily admits that he is no longer as broad-minded as he was when he became mayor of Amsterdam in 1983. At that time the Dutch city of 700,000 was notorious as the drug capital of Europe, a place where hashish was smoked openly in cafes and dealers peddled their wares with impunity. In the past few years, however, Amsterdam -- and indeed all of Holland -- has begun to question the freewheeling ways that have long characterized Dutch society. From sex to drugs to welfare, the Dutch are increasingly wondering if they have grown too permissive. As Housing and Environment Minister Ed Nijpels puts it, "Have we gone too far?"

Mayor Van Thijn reflects the country's new mood. He has turned tough, albeit reluctantly, cracking down on Amsterdam's drug dealers, rioting squatters and other criminals. Van Thijn, who confesses that, like most of his countrymen, he took a lenient attitude toward drug abuse in the 1970s, now looks back in anger. "In the past 15 years," he says, "tolerance became synonymous with permissiveness, weakheartedness and softness on law-and-order. Today backlash and debate about where Dutch society is going are in the air."

Across the Netherlands, from the busy Rotterdam docks to the gleaming electronics plants of Eindhoven, the Dutch, who have always loved a rousing moralistic argument, are indulging in just that heady passion. The debate, which focuses on the proper balance between freedom and license, is echoed in all the industrialized democracies. In fact, the rates of divorce, juvenile crime and unwed motherhood remain lower in the Netherlands than in most other European countries and the U.S. "Let us remember that we have an open society, a nice, friendly, clean country," says Cees van Lede, president of the Federation of Netherlands Industry. Nonetheless, the discussion has taken on a special urgency in the Netherlands, which has long enjoyed a reputation for social experiment and enlightened attitudes, as well as unorthodox solutions. As a result, the Dutch stir up controversy when they argue, drawing worldwide attention to their social ills.

Street crime is producing the strongest backlash. The problem is not murder and armed robbery but a wave of thievery and vandalism, much of it committed by drug addicts and squatters. In Rotterdam, theft has increased from 8,000 cases a year in 1960 to 64,000 in 1986. Radical "proletarian shoppers" help themselves to supermarket goods, frequently with impunity. Even Christian Democratic Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers, who presides over a center-right coalition government, has been touched by crime. Twice within the past year, Lubbers has chased down men who broke into his wife's car and held them until the police arrived.

The turning point may have come in January, when hundreds of krakers (militant squatters) occupied a seven-story building and a bank in the southeastern city of Nijmegen. The squatters battled police for the better part of a day, injuring 19 officers and causing $2 million in damage. The country was shocked by the realization that for several hours it was the krakers, not the authorities, who controlled the downtown of a major city. In the ensuing wave of indignation, politicians clamored for new laws against squatting.

Many of the Dutch blame politicians for encouraging permissiveness that engenders crime. Others accuse the courts, specifically judges whose views were shaped in the 1960s and '70s and who continue to hand out minimal, sometimes absurdly lenient, sentences. In one notable case last year a young man was stabbed to death outside a disco in Hilversum by a punker. The 23- year-old killer was given four years in prison, two of them suspended.

Overcrowding in jails has reinforced the trend toward leniency. A convict who escaped from prison last year and was subsequently recaptured was pleased to discover that his cell had been assigned to a newcomer. The former inmate was released in his own custody to await a jail vacancy. Each Friday in Amsterdam, a district attorney tours detention cells to determine who can be released to make room for more serious offenders.

As public alarm over crime has risen, the government has responded. Minister of Justice Frederik Korthals Altes last February won overwhelming parliamentary approval for a $40 million omnibus crime bill that calls for hiring more police and creating a criminal-investigat ion arm to assist municipal detective bureaus. Meanwhile, Housing Minister Nijpels announced the construction of 3,000 jail cells to supplement the 5,000 currently in use.

Many foreign visitors are shocked by the Netherlands' wide-open drug scene. Heroin is still overtly sold on some streets, despite increased police vigilance, while soft drugs such as marijuana and hashish are readily available at coffee shops. Waiters bring the fixings right to the table. An enterprising service called Home Blow Couriers even offers free delivery of drug orders in excess of $12.50. Small wonder that youthful "hash tourists," especially from West Germany, flock to Amsterdam's Dam Square, or that visitors who do not understand Dutch occasionally experience strange feelings from the marijuana pastries they unknowingly eat in coffee shops.

The de facto legality of marijuana and other soft drugs is a vivid example of what Erasmus University Sociologist Jan van Doorn calls the Dutch practice of "repressive tolerance." He argues that much of the country's leniency is actually "tactical," in that it is aimed at isolating and controlling a problem "under supervision of the authorities." The technique has long been used in the Netherlands. As Van Doorn explains, "Allow open prostitution, but limit it to certain neighborhoods, that is, the notorious walletjes ((red- light districts)) in Amsterdam and other cities." Similarly, the sale of soft drugs is condoned at certain youth clubs.

Hard drugs are usually sold in more menacing surroundings. On the Zeedijk, a narrow enclosed street near the central railroad station where few residents walk after dark, peddlers sidle up to passersby, within sight of policemen patrolling in pairs. On Dam Straat, Amsterdam's other notorious drug row, a span over a placid canal dubbed the "pill bridge" served as the main bazaar for illicit prescription narcotics until police cracked down recently.

Hard drugs are illegal, but only dealers are liable for prosecution; users are not arrested unless they commit other crimes. The Dutch are still experimenting with how to handle their 16,000 heroin addicts, a number that is significantly higher in proportion to the population than the estimated addicts in West Germany, Britain and France. In the late '70s, Amsterdam licensed four cafes to distribute heroin to addicts. The result was a spurt in drug-related crime and 30 heroin-overdose deaths a year. The city scrapped the scheme in 1980. Today, whenever a junkie is arrested for robbery or other crimes, he is offered a choice between going to jail or kicking the habit at a drug-rehabilitation center.

In no area is the debate louder than over issues of sexuality and morals. There was a national uproar last year, for example, when a bill was introduced to unify a patchwork of laws covering sex and pornography. One of the legislation's provisions triggered particular anger: lowering the age of consent from 16 to twelve years of age. Church leaders and parents were outraged, and the Dutch Cabinet quickly killed the proposed law.

Since then the debate has swirled around legislation that would amount to an equal-rights amendment for homosexuals, who already enjoy antidiscrimination guarantees in the civil and diplomatic services. The government has promised to produce a bill this autumn that will outlaw antihomosexual discrimination in housing and in the hiring of teachers in public and private schools. Many Catholics, as well as members of Lubbers' party, frown on the prospect of parochial schools being told they no longer have the right to choose their instructors, and the legislation's fate is uncertain.

The Netherlands is the only European country considering the legalization of euthanasia -- or mercy death, as the Dutch prefer to call it. Although euthanasia is illegal, Dutch physicians carry out an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 mercy deaths every year under a set of unofficial conditions: request of the patient, unbearable suffering, accord of the family and a second opinion by another physician. A panel of five provincial attorneys general reviews cases on a regular basis. In 1984 one of the smaller opposition parties proposed a law that would legalize euthanasia along the lines of present practice. The government is working on a more restrictive version, and sometime this fall the Cabinet must find a compromise.

The controversy over euthanasia goes to the heart of a traditional conflict in Dutch culture: strong religious faith, on one hand, vs. an instinct to use law and government as instruments of altruism. The issue points up a division between Dutch Protestants, many of whom favor euthanasia, and Catholics, many of whom oppose it on the ground that it is tantamount to murder. Above all, the argument demonstrates once again the Dutch compulsion to solve even the thorniest problems in the open, with the solution written into law.

As the debate about the country's direction runs its course, the Dutch will probably hew to their tradition of tolerance and choose a path somewhere between unfettered libertarianism and rigid social control. It could even be that in matters of social and private morals, the Dutch will move in yet more liberal directions. "Sure, pressure has been swinging against our freedoms, but there can be no turning back," insists Jeanne van Velse, leader of the 15,000-member Netherlands Federation for Sexual Reform.

On the other hand, a more conservative trend is emerging on law-and-order issues, even among those who applaud the spectacular social freedoms that their country champions. "I am a lifelong socialist, and I am very proud of my country's tolerant philosophy," explains Sociologist Herman Vuijsje. "But I live near the Zeedijk, and I am so offended by the drug scene there that I have surprised myself by abstaining ((from voting)) in protest."

Such shifts point to growing realism about what society should and should not tolerate. "In many ways, experimentation has been valuable," says a senior government official in the Hague. "We have a very live-and-let-live daily existence. But the major waste, the drugs and the crime, will have to be stopped." On the questions of drug abuse and unsafe streets, at least, there appears to be an increasingly vocal consensus: enough is enough.

With reporting by Jordan Bonfante and Wibo Vandelinde/Amsterdam