'WOULD MONSIEUR CARE FOR A THAI STICK?'

300 pot cafes in Amsterdam, while police look other way

AMSTERDAM, Holland -- "I don't want to mess with my head too much," says
the British college kid. "I just want a nice high."

Michael Veling, proprietor of the De Kuil bar and cannabis cafe in downtown
Amsterdam, gives his menu a quick once over and offers a couple of helpful
suggestions: jungle bud or Thai stick. The college kid opts for $200 worth
of bud, then joins his friends at a nearby table to sample the exotic weed.
Sound peculiar? Not in this Mecca of cannabis culture, where lighting up in
public is considered a God-given right.

While the Ontario justice system grapples with the question of whether to
give AIDS patients the right to use marijuana for medical purposes, and
Vancouver's Cannabis Cafe (which allows patrons to smoke up on its
premises) slugs it out with city officials over its right to stay open,
there are some 300 pot houses plying their trade in the quaint streets of
Amsterdam, in full view of the police.

Indeed, not only are Holland's cannabis cafes tolerated by the authorities,
they are to some extent regulated. A customer cannot buy more than five
grams of cannabis per day, and the cafe's inventory cannot exceed half a
kilo. Since the Dutch adopted a soft approach to soft drugs in 1976, per
capita consumption of cannabis has remained on par with other west European
countries, such as France and Germany where the authorities take a dim view
of cannabis trafficking. And there has been no measurable impact on crime,
or the health-care system.

In short, it's all working out well, and begs the question: Should Canada
get off its moral high horse and follow Holland's example when it comes to
dealing with pot? The answer is no. And not because Holland has gone too
far, but because it has not gone far enough.

For all the seeming openness surrounding pot culture in Holland, marijuana
and hashish are not legal in this country of 15 million. The Dutch favour
legalization, and legislators are willing to change the country's drug laws.

But Holland's pot retailers and smokers continue to exist in a kind of
legal no man's land. What's stopping the Dutch from getting what they want?
Strangely enough, the United Nations. Or rather the 1988 U.N. Convention
Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances -- a
sort of declaration of war on drugs, soft and hard.

If Holland, a signatory to the accord, were to legalize marijuana and
hashish, it would run afoul of the international community. And the Dutch
are just too polite for that sort of thing. Instead they choose to
mollycoddle the cannabis issue, while waiting for the rest of the world to
catch up to their way of thinking.

Still, if Holland did legalize cannabis, who would benefit? Not the
Cannabis Retailers Association (CRA), the strongest advocate of such a
move. At present, Holland's 1,200 cannabis cafes are getting a free ride
when it comes to taxes thanks to a Catch-22 scenario. They are required to
declare their income from the sale of cannabis, but because, strictly
speaking, their trade is illegal, they are not required to pay any taxes on
this income. As a result they pocket every guilder they earn.

Would the consumer benefit from legalization? Not likely. The Dutch like
regulation, and they would like to have government regulate the quality of
marijuana in the same way it regulates the quality of milk and cheese. But
in reality this is not necessary. Indeed, hydroponic marijuana grown in
Holland contains 12 times the THC -- the chemical compound that gives pot
its kick -- as marijuana cultivated outdoors in places like Colombia or
Jamaica.

In fact, legalization would probably lead to a whopping price hike, since
the government would tax cannabis to the hilt, just as it taxes tobacco and
alcohol. Veling, an executive with the CRA, estimates prices might increase
by as much as tenfold.

Ironically it's the Dutch government that stands to benefit most from the
legalization of pot. If it were to tax Holland's $ 3.2 billion cannabis
trade, it would collect hundreds of millions of dollars. Over time, perhaps
billions.

At some point, Canada will have to face reality, and formally soften its
position on soft drugs. Some police officers. in cities such as Vancouver,
Toronto and Montreal, are already doing just that by refusing to charge
people for possession of small amounts of cannabis. If cannabis is
tolerated, it should be legalized and taxed. Anything less is hypocritical.
Rather than slowly moving in the direction of the Dutch model, Ottawa
should look to legalization of cannabis as a goal.

But then we're probably too polite to ruffle feathers at the U.N., just as
the Dutch are. And however much Prime Minster Jean Chretien may want to get
his hands on additional tax dollars without having to raise taxes, he's
confused enough without having to deal with a nickname like the High-times PM.

Erik Heinrich is a freelance Toronto writer.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski