HOMEGROWN SCORES AT CANNABIS CUP

B.C. Growers' Wins At Marijuana Festival Reflect The Pot World's Shift To
The West Coast

At the annual harvest festival of the global marijuana movement in
Amsterdam, B.C. guerrilla growers walked off with the trophies for
cultivating this year's best pot.

Love Potion No. 1, produced by the Reeferman Seed collective, was named
best sativa, and God Bud from the growers at the B.C. Bud Depot, best
indica -- the two favoured species of the plant.

The prize is a simple silver goblet with a stylized cannabis leaf stem, but
the win can mean as much as $1 million in extra sales for the seed companies.

A half-dozen firms from across B.C. that specialize in pot products and
services -- from pipes and paraphernalia, to chemical cleaners and tours --
paid $6,000 US and up for a booth at the accompanying trade fair also
sponsored by High Times, the New York-based magazine considered an industry
Bible.

If there was any doubt that the epicentre of the pot world was shifting to
the West Coast, this year's 17th Cannabis Cup celebration confirmed the
province's ascendancy.

Meanwhile, Dutch coffee-shop owners were abuzz about whether the country's
experiment with liberal pot laws was over and the time had come to move to
Vancouver.

Sitting in the Bulldog Palace, a refurbished Amsterdam police station
complete with cells, and the flagship of a chain, owner Hank de Fries said
he thought the end was near.

"The coffee-shop culture is dead," he pronounced. "It's over and out. We
continue to exist because we know how to talk to the police people and the
tax department."

His colleagues, like Nol van Schaik, a former national coach of the Dutch
bodybuilding team and owner of the Willie Wortels coffee shops in nearby
Haarlem, agrees.

Van Schaik said he has become much more politically active in an attempt to
forestall the recent backsliding by the conservative government.

"I am doing this for my future," he explained. "I have a daughter and a
son, 26 and 22, and I have two grandchildren, and I want my grandchildren
to be third-generation coffee-shop owners."

In 1976, the Dutch Parliament passed a law that separated drugs into
different classes, the so-called hard and soft drugs. Cannabis was deemed
to be a schedule II drug as opposed to others such as LSD, cocaine, heroin
or methamphetamines. Possession of less than 30 grams of cannabis was given
no priority and coffee shops were allowed to sell marijuana and hashish to
adults.

It was de facto but not de jure legalization.

But since 1982, when U.S. President Ronald Reagan launched the war on
drugs, the Dutch government has been under increasing pressure from the
U.S. and its European neighbours to reverse that policy.

In 1995, they tightened the rules on coffee shops to reduce the acceptable
maximum purchase from 30 grams to five grams. Since then they have
increased penalties for growers and targeted those who are cultivating
commercially.

The number of coffee shops has fallen from a high of near 1,500 to fewer
than 800.

Now there is talk about banning foreigners from coffee shops, even though
they generate more than $3 billion in gross sales and nearly $340 million
in tax revenue.

Still, while the national government would like to bow to pressure and
change its pot policy, the mayors and municipal councils actually hold
sway, and they are less eager to lose a tourist draw and jobs.

Van Schaik, for instance, said he employs 24 staff, pays 19.5-per-cent tax
on sales, six-per-cent tax on his bar and the state has a 51-per-cent tax
on his profit.

"The municipalities not only get their cut of the taxes," he said, "they
don't have to spend any money sweeping the streets clean of dealers. Our
mayor urges us to put in more hotel rooms -- we have four now above our
coffee shop for rent -- because cannabis tourism brings money to town. We
are part of society as much as our minister tries to paint us as crooks
that ruin society."

De Fries said that at the same time they were trying to squeeze him out of
business, the government was trying to collect tens of millions they
figured he owed in back taxes.

"It's ridiculous," fumed the multi-millionaire, who also has a line of
clothing produced in Milan.

Coffee-shop owners, he said, are being asked to be crooks at their back
door, tax collectors at the front and genial hosts in between.

The clampdown on growers is not only counter-productive, but also will
resuscitate the gangs who once dominated the pot trade.

Up until the early 1990s, as in Canada, 90 per cent or more of the
marijuana and hashish sold in the Netherlands was imported by organized
criminals.

Today, in both nations, domestic production probably accounts for upwards
of 80 per cent of the market.

The coffee shops now buy from illicit mom-and-pop growers and small-time
smugglers, or they go to one of a handful of offices in Amsterdam to deal
with larger brokers.

"The market has changed completely," van Schaik said. "Now, our minister is
prosecuting growers, and what he's doing is causing organized crime to come
back to my back door."

Ben Dronkers, another pioneer coffee-shop owner, said you didn't need a
weatherman to read the political winds.

"They are putting people in prison again for growing marijuana," he told
me. "It's crazy."

Dronkers had one explanation for why the pot-legalization movement had
failed to solidify its gains in Amsterdam.

"They're stoned," he sighed. "That's the real answer. Absolutely. They can
talk about it for days, but try to move them. Come on.... As long as you
smoke, who cares? Nobody cares, nobody gives a s--- any more. That's really
not good."

That's why some of them are now looking at bud-friendly B.C.

"There is no doubt about it," de Fries said, "I [will] start a new business
in Vancouver within two to three years for sure. That's for sure. I love
Vancouver."