TOBACCO BAN WAFTS INTO AMSTERDAM POT SHOPS - BUT JOINTS STILL LEGAL

AMSTERDAM - Starting next week, you'll still be able to legally smoke
a joint in the famously relaxed coffee shops of Amsterdam - but for a
cigarette, you'll have to step outside.

A tobacco ban that goes into effect Tuesday in the Netherlands has
both tourists and shop owners, like, totally confused, man.

"It's crazy," says Jon Foster, 36, an American who owns the popular
Grey Area coffee shop in the gentrified Jordaan area of central
Amsterdam. "It seems totally illogical to have a business that
specializes in smoking and you ban tobacco."

The new law prohibits smoking in bars, cafes, restaurants and clubs to
protect people from secondhand tobacco smoke. It is similar to bans
that have swept across Europe since Ireland made pubs smoke-free in
2004, as well as restrictions across the USA.

The contradiction here is that the ban extends to coffee shops in the
Netherlands that are renowned since 1976 for letting people buy and
smoke marijuana or hashish without being arrested.

Starting Tuesday, customers can still legally buy up to 5 grams of
cannabis a day at a coffee shop and smoke it on the premises. But they
cannot smoke a regular cigarette - or mix the pot with tobacco, as
many Europeans prefer - without the risk of being cited by Dutch
health inspectors.

"I will have to ask, 'What's in that joint?' " says Ludo Bossaert, 49,
owner of the Paradox, another well-known shop. "What's the difference
if there's a little bit of tobacco in there? It's going to make it
pretty difficult to enforce."

Saskia Hommes, a spokeswoman for the Dutch health ministry,
acknowledges that banning tobacco smoking and allowing dope smoking
may seem "a bit odd."

"Under our system, these are two different things," she
says.

Amsterdam has 236 of the country's 720 coffee shops, says Mark
Jacobsen, chairman of the Amsterdam Union of Coffee Shops.

Foster, from North Kingstown, R.I., who has lived here since 1996,
predicts more people will take the cannabis home or outside to smoke
it mixed with tobacco.

He worries that will ruin the "excellent social atmosphere" of his
coffee shop, where neighbors, students and tourists come to drink
coffee, smoke, chat and read.

The cozy place is decorated with street signs, bumper stickers and
signed photos of singer Willie Nelson and actor Woody Harrelson, both
marijuana advocates. Customers drop in to the Grey Area for a quick
purchase from a menu of more than a dozen varieties of cannabis that
range in price from $13 a gram to $95 for 5 grams.

Michael Veling of the Cannabis Retailers Association says there's a
risk that more people could end up smoking cannabis on the streets if
they don't want to smoke at home. In the long run, he predicts, the
coffee shops will continue just fine.

"We get hundreds of thousands of Americans who come to our coffee
house, and I've never seen an American smoke tobacco in my 30 years in
the business," he says.

Pat Doherty, 54, a tourist from Wales, says he hopes the shops survive
the ban: "It's all cool."