Control preferred over prohibition

AMSTERDAM – From sex to drugs to death, few are as liberal-minded as the Dutch.

Soft-drug consumption in “coffee houses” and prostitution are perfectly legal, and the Netherlands has been a pioneer in permitting doctors to end the lives of their patients through euthanasia or assisted suicide.

“Why are Dutch so different?” Henk Reitsma, a South Africa-born Dutch citizen and anti-euthanasia activist here, asked before offering a common explanation for this country’s unique handling of hot-button social policies. The country jams 16.7 million people, about half of Canada’s population, into a land mass smaller than Nova Scotia’s.

“You have to learn to disagree,” Reitsma said in an interview here. The Dutch approach was addressed in a 2007 paper by academics analyzing the country’s experience with a liberal euthanasia and assisted suicide regime. The paper cited Dutch “candour” in approaching divisive issues, adding that the nation’s political culture values the idea that it is “better to guide social development” than to stop controver- sial developments.

University of Amsterdam professor James Kennedy, a U.s.-born specialist in Dutch history, ridicules any suggestion the Dutch have an anything-goes attitude. The Dutch are “control freaks,” he said, and this explains why the state allows soft drugs but takes a harder line on other drugs, and allows prostitution but bans pimping and the trafficking of sex workers.

“The idea is that if you allow these practices to occur under relatively good oversight, then they don’t form a threat to society. So the Dutch are not happy-go-lucky libertarians.”