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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.