27. Academic workshop Dealing with Drugs

"From tooth decay to drugs. Because we have to talk about drugs. Drug use is actually of all times. A year ago the mayor organized a conference and in it she asked the question shouldn't we actually regulate drugs? And the purpose of that conference was to see if regulation could be a solution to the war on drugs. Because the war on drugs that we've been waging for decades, it doesn't actually work. We win battles, but we don't win the war. If a lot of cocaine is seized in Rotterdam, it hardly has any effect on the trade that takes place. Well of course the question was why do we leave drugs, which is quite something you can also worry about, to criminals. Why do we regulate drugs like cigarettes and alcohol and not do it with ecstasy and cocaine?

At the conference we looked at: could that be done? What would that look like if you really wanted to regulate
XTC and wanted to regulate it and provide it from the government in a different way? Or with cocaine? How do we approach that? And the answer was very simple
We can. Technically it is possible. Only question is, of course, if it is technically possible, is it also feasible and will we succeed?

What can a mayor do? What can we do as a city to actually make it happen? Well, for that we want to establish an academic workshop.

For this academic workshop, a proposal must be submitted to the mayor. He has to approve it and we would like to do that. And in this academic workshop, experts as well as scientists will be brought together to share knowledge and think about these steps in regulation in the regulation agenda.

Openresearch is going to facilitate this process and if you want to know more about that we are right up there. Thank you."

This presentation was part of the research carousel during the program "How do you know what you know?" on Jan. 14, 2025 at Paradiso, Amsterdam.

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... of Academic Workshop on Drug Regulation in this collection.

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