Sun, 22 November 2009
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The Netherlands is unique not only in its liberal approach to recreational drug use, but also in its preventive measures. Editor Natasha Gunn speaks to the experts and asks why users of the country's number one drug are getting younger and what is being done about it.The number one drug used in the Netherlands is alcohol and what is worrying is that consumers are getting younger.
“Alcohol use starts at between 11 and 14, and between the ages of 13 and 16 pupils start to drink on a weekly basis,” says Roel Kerssemakers, senior prevention worker at the Jellinek, an institute for the treatment of alcohol, drug and gambling problems, serving Amsterdam, Gooi and Vechtstreek.
“If you compare alcohol with cannabis and look at pupils of 16 years you can say that 77 percent used alcohol last month, while 15.6 percent used cannabis,” he says.
According to a report from the European Monitoring Centre of Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), between 1997 and 2005, the use of alcohol in the young and very young has increased, whereas the percentage last year of users of cannabis, cocaine and amphetamines remained fairly stable among the general population in the Netherlands of 15 - 64 years.
Audray Wijks, a prevention worker at the Parnassia, which works on drug prevention and care in The Hague, Delft, Gouda, Leiden and Zoetermeer, believes that individualism, a loss of both control and social communities is to blame for the increase in alcohol consumption in the young.
“The world is faster and harder, which means you need to be tough to go with the flow. People have access via computers to a ‘virtual’ life and parents have less control over their children’s ‘actual’ lives,” says Wijks, who also sees the breakdown of family networks as a contributing factor.
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