For many years the Netherlands has had the reputation of being easy-going when it comes to the enforcement of drug prohibitions. In my youth a pilgrimage to Amsterdam was a mandatory part of life's journey for a certain kind of individual.
They're becoming less easy-going all the time. In recent years the government has sought to discourage drug tourism and has gradually tightened up on cannabis cafes. The most recent assault on its liberal reputation comes in the form of a ban on the import of khat.
Khat is a chewable weed that is the buzz of choice for many of our African friends. It also makes a lovely tea. Anti-khat hysteria has been driven in large part by claims that radical groups like al-Shabaab in Somalia are financing themselves by the trade in what has hitherto been a legal crop.
In yet another case of drug-war/terror-war convergence, the good (white) folks behind the ban are going to eliminate this trade by rendering the khat crop illegal.
Ponder that for a moment.
In order to deprive al-Shabaab of their profits from the khat trade they've made it illegal.
Did making marijuana illegal eliminate the marijuana trade? Did that trade become more profitable or less profitable by being prohibited?
Did the criminalization of cocaine eliminate the cocaine trade? Did the cocaine trade become more profitable or less profitable as a result of that criminalization?
Obviously this move will only enrich the khat trading networks. Insofar as radical groups benefit from that trade, they're in for windfall profits.
And in the Netherlands hundreds of thousands of otherwise law-abiding (black) khat chewers have become criminals overnight.
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