DUTCH CONSERVATIVES CRACK DOWN ON COFFEE SHOPS

For international travelers, Amsterdam has long served as a kind of
nirvana. Considered a forward-thinking capital light years ahead of
the rest of the world, much of the city's exceptional status is due
its coffee shops -- essentially marijuana bars -- where smoking pot
is perfectly legal. Coupled with other liberal sex and drug laws that
have ensured a level of tolerance no European city can rival,
Amsterdam has acted for many as a role model of what an enlightened
21st-century city should be.

But things aren't always what they seem. In recent years the
Netherlands, like many countries around the world, has witnessed a
rise in conservative power and with that, a corresponding tightening
of its once-famous looseness. The legendary Dutch credo "anything
goes" is increasingly becoming a thing of the past, and nowhere is
this more apparent than in its coffee shops.

The signs began to appear back in 2004, when the Dutch government
consented to ban smoking in public -- a measure fiercely resisted by
coffee shops fearing they'd take the biggest hit. The government
quickly U-turned, bowing to pressure from the hotel and catering
industry, and lifted the ban "indefinitely," giving the industry time
to exhale. Marijuana retailers, always considered a separate sector,
were quickly made exempt, and within days it was back to lighting up as usual.

While the uproar settled and coffee shops seemingly avoided
extinction, their existence continues to be silently and
systematically stubbed out. Those who flock to the Netherlands
seeking its unique tourist niche may not know it, but new coffee shop
licenses are rarely issued, and strict regulations have further
curbed existing numbers. Closed shops go unreplaced, and the overall
number continues to dwindle, dropping from 1,500 nationwide to
roughly 737 today. Amsterdam, once the Wild West of the European drug
trade, has 250 shops where it once had 800.

"You have to think three times about everything you do. It's getting
worse every year," says Ferry Hansen, owner of Get A Life coffee shop
in Amsterdam. Hansen, who has been in the business for 14 years, has
seen government policies tighten as once vague laws, set in place for
years, have become rigorously enforced. "The government is trying to
control more and more. If you follow the law, they can't say
anything, but in the long run, they'll probably get what they want."

Much of the push towards more stringent control can be attributed to
the Christian Democrats (CDA), the most powerful party in the Dutch
coalition government, which went on the offensive as soon as it won
elections in 2002. Headed by Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, a
devout Christian who blamed growing juvenile drug use on the cannabis
industry -- even though the minimum legal age to enter a coffee shop
is 18 -- the CDA immediately promoted a "zero option" on tolerance.
"This is not a battle we're going to win overnight," Marcel Maer, a
CDA spokesman told Britain's Sunday Times just days after the
election. "But we will chip away at the coffee shops, greatly
reducing their number over the next two years until hopefully we can
get rid of them altogether."

Many of the regulations the government now enforces were actually
established in 1996 in an effort to standardize the industry, which
had developed from being reasonably discreet in the late 1970s to
unrestrained in the late 1980s. It was then, at the height of ecstasy
consumption, that a number of coffee shops peddled both hard and soft
drugs, bucking the division of markets they purported to support.
Bowing to international pressure, the Netherlands began restricting
coffee shop numbers, working in tandem with the Bond van Cannabis
Detaillisten, a union of organized coffee shop owners who agreed --
much to their commercial advantage -- that their numbers should be
halved and remaining licenses be made nontransferable.

But it wasn't until the CDA tried to reign in coffee shops that these
laws were heavily enforced. They include making it illegal to label
lighters, rolling papers or display cannabis leaves -- all considered
active advertising, limiting businesses to 500 grams of inventory,
capping customer purchases to 5 grams per day, and banning businesses
within 500 meters of a school. So if a new school pops up, the coffee
shop can be closed without warning.

Additionally, in 2003 the BIBOB (an Act for the Promotion of
Integrity Evaluations by Public Government) laws were introduced,
targeting the entire service industry (including prostitutes) to
prevent organized crime from getting involved. A special task force
was created to enforce the laws by making random raids on coffee
shops, "usually busting in like a bunch of cowboys," notes Hansen, to
search staff and customers, and verify all of the required paperwork
- -- license, fire inspection records, chamber of commerce
registration, rental contract, photocopied staff identification, and
more. "If one side of this ID isn't photocopied, that's a fine and
you're closed for a week," says Hansen, fingering an ID while
flipping through a white folder as thick a telephone directory. "Make
a second mistake, you're closed for two weeks. Make a third mistake,
and you're closed permanently."

But while some owners balk at the government muscling in, others like
Henry Dekker, owner of Republiek, Siberie and de Supermarkt coffee
shops in Amsterdam, thinks regulations have formalized the market
positively. "The government wants to clean it up so only the best
businesses stay. This is a competitive market -- so if you're not
good, no business," he says, rolling a hash joint as he speaks.

Dekker has been in the business for 20 years and believes owners
influence policy more than politicians: By earning a record of
professional behavior, they actually increase their bargaining
rights. In Dekker's case, this has panned out. He's opening a new
coffee shop in neighboring Mijdrecht, a conservative community that
advertised for one to help settle their problems with drug
trafficking on the street. "We're normalizing the trade, selling
herbs just like we did in the Golden Age," says Dekker. "We're a
normal business with a quality product, and we've been acknowledged
for doing our job and doing it well."

But job appreciation is not something doled out equally. "I'm more
negative," says another coffee shop owner, who wishes to remain
anonymous and whose business has been in the family since the early
1980s. "It's a lot more aggressive. For a few weeks after a raid,
we're left shocked and intimidated. We're just doing our job, but
everything is sealed off, we're treated like criminals and told to
put our arms up. We follow the rules, there's no reason to come in
this way," the owner says. "At times I feel like quitting, so I won't
have to be a part of this ridiculousness. Whether you're a smoker or
not, this is a relaxing place and 60 percent of what we sell isn't
weed -- it's bread or sandwiches. We shouldn't be treated this way."

No matter how responsible they are, coffee shop owners are
marginalized because their industry has never gained full legal
status. While liberal Dutch drug policy makes a distinction between
marijuana and hard drugs (like heroin and cocaine), all drugs are
considered illegal -- even though, paradoxically, using them is not.
As a result, inconsistent law forbids owners from bringing marijuana
through the back door -- they could be arrested buying their
inventory, even though they are allowed to sell it through the front door.

"If you get into trouble, the bottom line is it's a prohibited,
unregulated product associated with the drug industry," says Kristie
Szalanski, a staff member at Amsterdam's Cannabis College, a
nonprofit foundation devoted to educating the public on weed. She
notes that pubs where alcohol is sold are never raided. "This means
that technically, coffee shop owners are criminals." An oversight the
government makes, of course, when collecting taxes.

Due to this paradox, over the last few years the CDA itself has taken
a confusing position on weed legislation. In 2003, the government
legalized medical marijuana sold at pharmacies, yet backtracked two
years later when the system fell into financial chaos -- mostly
because patients preferred buying their stash at coffee shops. Then
in 2004, Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner urged the government to
ban local marijuana, claiming THC levels were too potent. Donner
further suggested banning coffee shops from serving foreigners -- a
move tantamount to saying only Brits can enter British pubs -- which
quickly provoked international outrage. The politician continued
taking a hard line on soft drugs, attempting to bring Dutch drug
policy in line with the European Union, until he resigned a few weeks
ago due to a damning report that pointed to his responsibility in the
deaths of 11 refugees in a fire while being detained at Schiphol Airport.

While Donner may no longer be on the scene, the Dutch government's
desire to subdue coffee shops has much to do with appeasing folks
like Jacques Chirac, whose country, according to a survey by the
French Observatory of Drugs and Drug Use, boasts the largest number
of teenage cannabis consumers in Europe. Sweden, too, has taken the
hard line, and of course there's America, which seeks to impose
prohibition on the rest of the world through its war on drugs. But
maybe it should start at home. According to the 2001 National
Household Survey on Drug Abuse, 36.9 percent of Americans have tried
cannabis versus 17 percent in the Netherlands.

For the foreseeable future, coffee shops will continue to exist, but
are likely to keep diminishing in number. "The way Dutch policy
works, it would take at least 60 years or more before they
disappeared," jokes Dekker. Most owners would agree it's a
slow-moving boat that would face an arduous fight with popular
sentiment. "In Holland, the population knows the system's working,"
he says. Still, for now, the CDA, which chose not to respond to this
reporter's questions, keeps pushing for lower numbers. "With every
election it's an issue. You don't know how politicians are going to
react," cautions Hansen. With upcoming Dutch elections in November,
the next majority party, however conservative, might choose to take a
softer line. Or things could change overnight -- much as they did in
the United States when the Patriot Act was passed curtailing free
speech, a right that had been fought for and claimed for over two centuries.

"I don't know how long [my shop] will exist," says Hansen. "I could
be in business for five years or 25 years. But I really don't know for sure."

Dara Colwell is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn.