Amsterdam has proposed legalising cocaine - Bloomberg

In Amsterdam (Netherlands) they propose to make cocaine legal. According to the head of Amsterdam Femke Halsema, from the legalisation of cocaine "everyone will benefit", as it is pointless to fight the drug trafficking. About it writes Bloomberg.

She noted that the drug business has "billion-dollar" revenues, and drug trafficking is not decreasing even taking into account regular police raids.

According to the city head, if the authorities take control over the distribution and use of cocaine, the criminals will lose their sources of income and it will become pointless for them to work in the city.

Let me conclude that hundreds of years of frustration and repression have achieved little. It turns out that people have a need for stimulants. There is a market for that," she said in an interview.

Halsema stressed that she was not in favour of the "hasty legalisation" of cocaine, but of its regulation. She recalled that such a thing is already happening in the Dutch government's cannabis pilot project, where it is legally sold in cafes.

As Bloomberg writes, the number of seized cocaine shipments in the Netherlands increased last year. The largest amounts of cocaine were found in the ports of Rotterdam and Flissingen, and drug trafficking at Dutch airports also increased.

Cocaine is a sympathomimetic drug with central nervous system stimulant properties and the ability to induce euphoria. The World Anti-Doping Code (international standard) of the World Anti-Doping Agency (ABA) lists cocaine as one of 86 permanently banned drugs and substances, together with other psychostimulants.