WHEN IN FLORENCE

Finally, a Card That Recognizes Marijuana As Medicine Across The
EU

Florence, the birthplace of the Renaissance, has been one of the most
beautiful cities in the Western world for almost a thousand years. Now
considered one of the most desirable tourist destinations of all,
especially for its art, architecture and cultural heritage, the city
features elegant plazas, palaces, churches, monasteries, museums, art
galleries and magnificent parks and gardens.

I'm here for 10 days on a rare personal mission, visiting my friend
Soul Lucille without one gig, personal appearance or other
responsibility beyond filing this column for the Metro Times to impede
my full enjoyment of this great cultural metropolis, walking the
ancient streets where once trod such incredible human beings as Dante,
Boccaccio, Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Machiavelli, Michelangelo,
Donatello and Gallileo.

I'd been seriously disappointed on previous trips to Italy by the
difficulty in finding adequate medicine after the Italian government
headed by media baron Silvio Berlusconi (sort of the Rupert Murdoch of
Italy) cracked down on marijuana and severely criminalized users and
growers. When in Rome the first time in 2006, I met guys who were
growing some very good weed where I was staying at Forte Prenestino,
the 19th century army installation taken over by the autonomie
movement in the 1980s. But the next time I visited, their gardens had
been torn up, their growing had ended.

The only smoke I found in Italy was uniformly low-grade hashish.
Someone told me that there was a single source for hash in the
criminal underworld and everybody got the same stuff to peddle retail,
which seemed to make sense in the society that gave "organized crime"
its bad name.

Since then I've toured Italy extensively, playing gigs and doing
readings and lectures, but nobody ever had any good weed to share, and
my symptoms - physical aches and pains, mental anguish, the recurring
paucity of creative inspiration - would go largely untreated until I
could get back to my base in Amsterdam.

It was the same thing in France: Beyond Paris,
where I had friends in the viper underground, it
was difficult to find something medicinal to
smoke. Last year I attended the MNOP festival -
Music of New Orleans in Perigeoux - and went
three days without a joint or even a whiff on the
festival grounds. I suffered along with my
compatriots from the 101 Runners Mardi Gras
Indian funk band - and the entire New Orleans
contingent - from the continuous absence of medication.

As a medical marijuana patient in Michigan, I can travel around the
state that once imprisoned me for possessing two joints, and to the
other 15 states that recognize cannabis as medicine as well as our
nation's capital, without fear of arrest and with a fair assurance of
the availability of dosages of appropriate quality wherever I might
go. This spring, my friend Ben Dronkers in Amsterdam alerted me to the
benefits of medical marijuana status in the Netherlands and, by
extension, the European Union.

While it's still possible for anyone over 18, sick or well, to
purchase up to five grams of cannabis over the counter at any of
Holland's 750 coffee shops, the Netherlands has also recognized
marijuana as a medicine and allows for prescription by doctors and
medical practitioners for a whole range of illnesses.

So I made an appointment with a doctor in Amsterdam who had been
recommended to me. I showed him my Michigan patient card and explained
that I would feel better if I had a prescribed dose of marijuana in my
possession when I was in Holland and elsewhere in the European Union.
He wrote me a prescription for 10 grams of cannabis flos to be taken
at the rate of one gram per two days.

My visit cost =8049 (about $70 U.S.) at the doctor's office, and to
fill my prescription at the pharmacy on Dam Square amounted to another
=8093, or =809.30 per gram. But I had to wait three days for the
prescription to be filled, since the pharmacy didn't stock the
required medicine and had to send out for it.

Now I have two refillable official 5-gram containers with my
prescription written on the side, my doctor's name and the signature
of the Minister of Health or whatever he's called in Holland. As
Dronkers explained, this medicine prescribed by a doctor in the EU
would be recognized as medicine throughout the EU, no matter the local
laws pertaining to recreational marijuana use.

The bottom line is that I'm now taking it with me around the European
Union, thus making sure I have my medicine in the prescribed strength
and dosage at all times and under the protection of the European
medical establishment. This is so far superior to sitting in a foreign
place for seven days praying for a toke that it isn't even funny.

Medical marijuana in the Netherlands may soon become a subject of
great interest to American and other foreign visitors to Amsterdam.
Speaking of not funny, DutchNews.nl reports that the right-wing
government of the Netherlands "is pressing ahead with plans to turn
all cafes selling small amounts of cannabis into members-only clubs,
accessible only to people officially living in the
Netherlands.

"Ministers say turning the so-called coffee shops into private clubs
will reduce drugs-related tourism and public nuisance, and 'adequate
measures' will be taken by police and officials to make sure the move
does not lead to an increase in street dealing."

The attack on the coffee shops - and, consequently, the entire
cannabis culture of Holland - follows upon the 2009 recommendations of
a government commission, which said hashish and marijuana were now
much more powerful than in the 1970s, and that "the bigger the coffee
shops get, the more likely they are to be in the hands of organized
crime." Thus, the commission concluded, the cafes should become
smaller and only sell to locals.

What are these characters smoking? Over the past 40 years, Holland has
developed a system that is working very smoothly for the society as a
whole and that has generated an extensive industry based on the
cultivation, delivery and retail sale of marijuana and hashish. The
strength and efficiency of the product has simply increased in
response to consumer demand.

From my own point of view, the only flaw in the present system is that
cultivation and delivery remain illegal while personal use and retail
sales are entirely decriminalized. The idiocy lies in the fact that
the illegal growing industry involves about 40,000 people and is
estimated to generate some =802 billion a year. If marijuana were
fully legalized there would be no more "organized crime" in the
cannabis industry whatsoever.

The Dutch marijuana identity card issue arose just as I was leaving
Holland for Italy last week. I'll be filing my next column from
Amsterdam and plan to catch up on the fallout from this destructive
edict upon my return. Until then, I'll be enjoying my Dutch medical
marijuana here on the Piazza della Repubblica and all over Florence
while I'm in this amazing Renaissance city. Ciao!