I’d been curious about the origins of Trimbos for a while (we’ve been relaying their content for years), even more so since my Dutch improved to the point I can read at least some of their Dutch language content. I’d noticed that the younger folk in NL tended to mistrust it slightly as it works very closely with the govt and national health service, and its advice did indeed often resemble the sort of stuff you’d get from the better Christian led drugs advice centres.
Today I found out why – Professor Kees Trimbos (whom the institute is named after) was the director of the Catholic Mental Health Research Service in Utrecht!
Although he drifted away from the church due to disagreements over the level of tolerance of LGBT communities (which he advocated) and his warnings in 1950s about the risk of sexual abuse within traditionalist Catholic circles were also ignored (he even suggested at Vatican Council II the church should go further and abolish the vows of celibacy required of priests) he did still manage to actually get sex education programmes onto Catholic TV in NL in the 1960s [1]
The alcohol and drugs research institute formed in his name (which is a lot newer, from 1996) is today responsible for nearly all the harm reduction info about MDMA that is available today…
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kees_Trimbos
[1] Dutch public broadcasting law states that every religion is entitled to TV and radio channels with varying levels of state assistance (there is even a channel allocation for atheists but its not in use :laugh_at:)
