friends of mine got a jury trial for the relatively minor offence of holding a unlicensed rave. They were far from lucky, both got prison sentences.
“gedoben” does not mean to tolerate/accept but to begrudgingly endure a bad/disagreeable situation with the hope of making things better. This social experiment is nearly as old as the older folk on here. It was also tried in a number of other countries – the Scandinavians tried it, now only one bit of DK tolerates overt cannabis use whereas SE has very harsh zero tolerance policies which are as harsh as a European nation could ever get.
A lot changed since the start – the fall of European borders and start of a single currency (a money launderers paradise). I strongly suspect the Dutch had hoped that other EU nations would follow suit and decriminalise drugs possession, which to be fair Britain did once clearly consider doing and even without full decriminalisation penalties for such have been decreased loads in my lifetime. When I first started partying hard in the early 90s young people from middle class backgrounds were getting put up before Court and even sent to prison for small amounts of class B and A drugs. Now 5 or even 10 pills often gets a caution whether they are strong or weak.
Other European countries also have changed policies to some extent in the last 20 years. But though there are similarities, every EU country has its own unique culture. NL is a country which is actually relatively socially conservative but economically liberal and still has a strong work ethic influenced by (but not exclusive to) its Protestant community – the only reason a lot of things are “gedoben” is when the businesses involved pay their taxes.
This is another issue – the coffeeshop owners in some areas pissed on their own chips by using “customised” accounting software to deliberately understate their sales and not pay as much taxes, instead of accepting that the taxes paid offset any problems caused by cannabis use – and that there was still a rise in crime/anti social behaviour associated with cannabis coffee shops as well as the wider night time economy. BTW the areas of the UK closest to NL cuturally (especially due to trade links) are East Anglia and Scotland. The licensing policies of Ipswich are near identical to those of Amsterdam minus the “gedoogbeleid” part – more so since the murders and missing persons in 2006 which were all linked with the night time economy (not just of the sex workers but clubbers being shot/going missing etc).
