Amsterdam mayor launches “health” manifesto for legalising drugs.

Amsterdam’s mayor Femke Halsema is first on the list of signatories to a new “health-focused” manifesto calling for decriminalising and regulating drugs such as cocaine.

The manifesto was launched at what was described as a “historic” conference where global mayors and drug experts argued it would be more effective to regulate drugs like cocaine than the current state of prohibition and law-enforcement.

Halsema said she believed it was a “moderate and sensible position” to argue – as she did a year ago to a group of European mayors – that the “war on drugs has failed” so it would be better to “de-criminalise drug use and regulate it”.

Defending her position from “hot-tempered” attack and distancing herself from justice minister Dilan Yeşilgöz, who said she was not waging a war on drugs by cracking down at harbours, Halsema told a packed conference that regulation of drugs such as cocaine was the only way to reduce social damage.

“If we continue to fight drugs and drug users, we will remain caught in a never-ending war on drugs,” she said, opening the Dealing with Drugs conference in Amsterdam. “If we want to fight crime and the violence associated with the drug trade, we need to take the drug market away from the criminals.

“Not by creating a free market, but by taking a controlled, responsible approach. This will reduce drug-related crime, improve public health and the general wellbeing of our citizens and relieve our criminal justice system.”

Corruption

Presenting a manifesto signed already by Alec von Graffenried, mayor of Bern in Switzerland and Claudia López, former mayor of Bogotá in Colombia, she said she hoped the realities of international city life would open the door to discussion. “Thank you for being a force hopefully for the normalisation of regulation of drugs,” she told the conference. “We opened a window but I hope it’s going to be a door…the beginning of humane, civilised and effective drug policies.”

While some speakers accepted that they were speaking to a coalition of the willing – “preaching to the choir” – others stressed that a drug approach based on defunding criminal networks and reducing health harms was realistic and pragmatic. Cannabis has been legalised and regulated in multiple places around the world, a trial has begun in Breda, and the Swiss capital of Bern is now working on a pilot of regulated cocaine, after an explosion of open crack cocaine use on the streets last year.

Corruption

Presenting a manifesto signed already by Alec von Graffenried, mayor of Bern in Switzerland and Claudia López, former mayor of Bogotá in Colombia, she said she hoped the realities of international city life would open the door to discussion. “Thank you for being a force hopefully for the normalisation of regulation of drugs,” she told the conference. “We opened a window but I hope it’s going to be a door…the beginning of humane, civilised and effective drug policies.”

While some speakers accepted that they were speaking to a coalition of the willing – “preaching to the choir” – others stressed that a drug approach based on defunding criminal networks and reducing health harms was realistic and pragmatic. Cannabis has been legalised and regulated in multiple places around the world, a trial has begun in Breda, and the Swiss capital of Bern is now working on a pilot of regulated cocaine, after an explosion of open crack cocaine use on the streets last year.

Corruption

Presenting a manifesto signed already by Alec von Graffenried, mayor of Bern in Switzerland and Claudia López, former mayor of Bogotá in Colombia, she said she hoped the realities of international city life would open the door to discussion. “Thank you for being a force hopefully for the normalisation of regulation of drugs,” she told the conference. “We opened a window but I hope it’s going to be a door…the beginning of humane, civilised and effective drug policies.”

While some speakers accepted that they were speaking to a coalition of the willing – “preaching to the choir” – others stressed that a drug approach based on defunding criminal networks and reducing health harms was realistic and pragmatic. Cannabis has been legalised and regulated in multiple places around the world, a trial has begun in Breda, and the Swiss capital of Bern is now working on a pilot of regulated cocaine, after an explosion of open crack cocaine use on the streets last year.