Initiatives in protest
In the late 1970s there are around seven thousand heroin addicts in Amsterdam and an increasing number of (illegal) heroin prostitutes. They cluster together around Nieuwmarkt and Zeedijk and live under very unhygienic conditions in squats. Street trading and the open use of drugs cause a lot of nuisance, against which hardly any action is taken. Because of the hesitant and wait-and-see attitude of the local government, initiatives by De Regenboog often take on a protest character.
Explosive situation
Stichting De Regenboog took action in the cold winter of 1979 to find shelter for a "vagrant group" of young addicted Surinamese. With the police on their heels, these young people move from place to place. The situation is explosive. A Suriname section has existed within The Regenboog since 1976. This now acts as an advocate for a group of users who have nowhere to go.
De Doelen squatted
In record time, a plan is being developed called Njoeng Libi: New Life. Together with the Surinamese welfare organization Apoera, among others, De Regenboog sets up a steering committee. While meetings and conferences are taking place at City Hall, the steering committee gives the signal for action. Via the roof of De Kloof on the Kloveniersburgwal, the vacant De Doelen building two houses away is squatted. The building is immediately cleaned and an order service is put into effect. In the evening there is food and a warm place. Two weeks later, nearly twelve hundred visitors are registered. Half are under the age of twenty-five.
The Doelen cracked | Photographer Hans van Dijk
.Threatening arrest
Reverend Wouters helps with the squat: "In 1979, the city was teeming with heavily addicted heroin users. There were daily deaths, but there was hardly any shelter. In desperation, we then squatted De Doelen to start a shelter there. Mayor Polak was strongly against it and threatened to have me arrested, but we persevered. Later he did admit that we were on the right track. Drug addiction should not be tackled with repression alone, but with a social approach. We made a stand for that."
Methadone as an alternative
The first capital city methadone bus was the response of the municipality and the then GG&GD to an acute public-order problem: a large stray group of heroin addicts was holed up in and around De Doelen. Many hundreds of users - estimates range from six hundred to twelve hundred people, mostly of Surinamese or Antillean descent - come there daily to buy their drugs. Local residents complain about noise pollution, stabbings, urinating in public and unconscious addicts on the toilets of neighborhood cafes. There is also a lot of crime in the immediate area: car break-ins, shoplifting, robberies, et cetera. With the free provision of methadone, a synthetic opiate, the city hopes to offer these addicts a cheap alternative to heroin and thus also get the group "into care.
Hats, guns and dope
Initially, addicts kicked off rehab using small doses of methadone, sometimes supplemented by some librium and sleeping tablets. Giel van Brussel joined the GG&GD as a doctor in 1977. He recalls having to defend each methadone tablet "to death. "Whether I was crazy? You don't give alcoholics gin, do you?" At the invitation of the steering committee, Van Brussel held consulting hours a few times a week in De Doelen: "If you came in there, you saw a big, black den with three light bulbs on a cord from the Regenboog's office. And then all these Surinamese were sitting there, with caps on, and there were tables, with knives, guns and dope. About a thousand people a day would parade by there." A standoff ensues. The dealers are, in fact, in charge in De Doelen, but can the municipality vacate without an alternative for all those addicted people?"
De Doelen links, De Kloof rechts