From: Darrell Parfitt (eng5dgp@titan.vcu.edu)
Date: Mon Sep 22 1997 - 14:15:56 MDT
On Sat, 20 Sep 1997, Mark Grant wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Sep 1997, Joost de Lyser wrote:
>
> > worlds largest. The countries economy depends highly on transport & sales
> > of imported goods to other european countries.
>
> On a related subject I'd be interested to know how much the Dutch economy
> benefits from sales of illegal drugs to other European countries, and how
> much of that trade is included in the GNP figures.
>
> Mark
>
Nontaxable sales not included in GNP. There's the rep for a lot
of drugs there,
but it's overblown, i.e., it's legal but a lot of the business is
tourists. I don't see them as the major Europeon distribution center for
drugs (Like Mexico is for North America) for a couple reasons. First,
it's got too much of a rep. The borders are too tightly watched. They
don't have a couple thousand mile area from which to ship things out. It
also doesn't produce all that much drugs. The hashish comes from Morocco,
primarily through Spain, heroin via Nigeria from Thailand, ditto for
methamphetamine. Cocaine might come through the harbors. Small labs
presumably produce methamphetamine, MDMA, and other stuff, but that is
spread out through the technological Northern Europe, including Germany
and Switzerland.
I'm sure that there is a goodly amount of International drug
traffic in Holland, just like anywhere else, and perhaps more, simply
because it is a major harbor. I don't see the reasoning behind the
assumption that because there are a few hash bars the Netherlands is the
center of the Europeon drug trade. Supply generally flows through
countries with marginal economies and weak law enforcement, and the
automatic suspects would be Russia, the Eastern block, and North Africa.
Darrell Parfitt
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