News (Media Awareness Project) - Netherlands: Dutch Treat |
| Title: | Netherlands: Dutch Treat |
| Published On: | 2003-04-28 |
| Source: | Toronto Sun (CN ON) |
| Fetched On: | 2008-01-20 18:35:02 |
DUTCH TREAT
AMSTERDAM -- It takes about a five-minute walk after arriving at Central
Station to realize you've just landed on Fantasy Island. With working girls
shaking their thing and beckoning for business in bay windows, shopping
that has an eye-opening amount of pornography and the tangy smell of
marijuana wafting out every time a coffee shop door is opened, the
anything-goes fantasy is not exactly for everyone.
Touring the Red Light District, the lovely canals that run through it and
the historic architecture is akin to studying the brain of an aging rock
star who was blessed with a prodigious sense of taste.
It's just one small part of one city in the Netherlands, but it has become
a flashpoint for the international marijuana debate, a legendary tourist
stop which deals marijuana as regularly as Las Vegas dealers end up with
blackjack.
A city, and a country, where people can wander into certain cafes and buy a
small amount of cannabis without fearing arrest or prosecution. A drug
policy some say is the most effective in the world.
"In Holland, we believe you can do what you want as long as you don't
bother anyone else," said Wernard Bruining, who was one of the first to
have a coffee shop licensed to sell pot in the 1970s.
Back in 1972, the founder of the Mellow Yellow Coffeeshop had no idea he
was part of a revolution which would be watched and studied by the rest of
the world.
"Marijuana won't go away," Bruining said. "I think that one day all of
Europe will be like Holland."
It's already happening as Great Britain, Belgium and Switzerland, among
other countries, are moving toward more liberal treatment of marijuana.
In the Netherlands, marijuana is not legal although it would be hard to
tell after walking by many of the 300-odd Amsterdam coffee shops which sell
it. "Coffee shop" in Holland literally means a place which sells weed.
Marijuana is treated separately from hard drugs and is "depenalized,"
essentially a national tolerance policy which allows people to carry 30
grams and less. The coffee shops can sell customers no more than five grams
at a time.
It has created a rather indifferent view of pot from the nation's 15
million citizens and one of the lowest pot-smoking rates in the
industrialized world. The latest United Nations study on global drug trends
shows that the Netherlands wouldn't even crack the top 50 in marijuana
consumption.
The annual percentage of people older than 15 who smoke pot in the
Netherlands is 4.1%. In comparison, 8.9% of Canadians do.
"Marijuana is just no big deal here," said Henk Lokhorst, who lives just
outside Amsterdam. "It's lost that taboo feel. Most of my friends don't
smoke, it's just not a part of their lives and not something you think
about. In Canada, there is still that allure, that idea of a forbidden fruit.
"The Dutch don't have these coffee shops because they want to smoke pot.
They have them for two reasons: One, the system seems to work and two,
people are making a lot of money."
It's still attractive to tourists. There is no question marijuana is a big
draw, right there with prostitutes and Van Gogh.
The coffee shops are busiest on weekend evenings when the young from all
over the world gather to smoke and test their intellect and pickup lines
with one another.
Stacy and Lynn are 18 years old and from Ontario. They'd rather their
mother not know what they were up to on vacation. To them, Amsterdam is Oz.
"You get a strange feeling when you walk into a coffee shop in Amsterdam,"
said Stacy while in the Green House, a famed award-winning coffee house.
"You're intimidated. For a moment you think you're doing something dirty.
And then it goes away and soon it's just part of the culture. You look
around and I guarantee you will think 'What is wrong with this? Why does
this upset so many people?' "
The girls are boggled by the menus they've sifted through: Haze Skunk, Maui
Mist, Red Dawn, White Widow, Blueberry Bubblegum, Silver Haze, and the
Super Skunk.
"And here I thought pot was just pot," Lynn said.
The girls spend 15 euros -- about $25 Cdn. -- on some recommended Maui Mist
and are set for the night.
Coffee-shop owners estimate that for every 20 euros tourists pay for
marijuana, they'll spend 200 euros on food and lodging in the city.
'Experienced Hitter'
The goal of the country's drug policy was to emphatically distinguish soft
drugs such as marijuana from hard drugs like heroin, cocaine and amphetamines.
The coffee shops are designed to be the conduit of that policy. They can
only sell to people over 18 years old, are rarely licensed to sell alcohol,
can't advertise and can never sell hard drugs.
At the Green House, as is the case in most good coffee shops, the pot is
strong. On the menu a brand called AK-47 is nicknamed "The Killer." Its
tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) level is somewhere between 18%-22%, or about
three times higher than the average of what you find in Canada.
"I wanted the strongest stuff they had and they sold me this for 12 euros,"
American tourist Eddie Ponika said. "I'm an experienced hitter and this
stuff nearly knocked me out. Wow! I'd like to take this home."
Maybe not quite the desired effect Green House proprietor Arjan was going
for, but close enough.
"The growing of stronger and different varieties of marijuana was the base
in the plan for keeping a lot of people from using hard drugs," Arjan said.
"The lack of good cannabis is the start for some people to use hard drugs."
Coffee shops are an eclectic mix of bar-like atmospheres as well as
Jamaican and eastern-Asian themed rooms.
In the Mellow Yellow on a recent visit, five people are there, one a
professional reading a local newspaper, a couple on a date and two
20-something tourists, coughing as they roll cone after cone. On the walls
are images of Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd and Bob Weir.
"Marijuana is the only drug I would touch and that's just once a week,"
said Gries van der Lingen, an Amsterdam salesman. "It's just a peaceful
getaway from my work day."
Popular coffee shops can make more than one million euros a year. A gram of
marijuana costs between 8-15 euros, on average.
There are also other "Smart Shops" throughout Amsterdam where you can
legally buy magic mushrooms and herbal pills like ephedra and "natural
ecstasy."
In the Red Light District tourists can't walk half a block without being
asked to buy cocaine or ecstasy. The dealers work near cops, half-heartedly
trying to conceal what they're doing but the cops don't really care,
understanding it would be pointless to take these people to jail.
"They sell the hard drugs here to prey on the tourists, that's where the
market is," said police officer Adriaan Simonszoon.
What seems like an abundance of hard drugs and addicts is deceiving because
it is concentrated in one place: The Red Light District.
A study by the Ministry of Health in the Netherlands comparing drug use
between its country and the U.S. shows 10.5% of Americans have used cocaine
at some point in their lives, which is five times more than in the Netherlands.
Among 13 member states of the European Union, the Netherlands ranks 11th in
terms of hard-drug addicts.
"The vast majority of Dutch cannabis users do not try hard drugs," said
Dirk J. Korf of University of Amsterdam Drug Research.
Political Reality
Although the coffee shop system has been effective, there are many
opponents who would like to see them closed. It's clear there will be some
changes as a new coalition government -- led by the Christian Democratic
Appeal, a conservative party -- takes charge. The coalition has said it
would like to shut down half of the 800 coffee shops in the Netherlands.
"It would be a sweet thing if we could eventually retract
decriminalization," Piet-Hein Donner, the acting Dutch minister of justice,
said recently.
But he admitted the government was stuck with a political reality of the
current landscape and thought it best to give priority to tackling other
forms of crime.
[SIDEBAR]
SMOKIN'
Annual prevalence of use as percentage of the population aged 15 and above.
Ireland 9.4%
UK 9.4
France 7.4
Switzerland 7.0
Spain 7.0
Germany 6.0
Denmark 4.4
Netherlands 4.1
Luxembourg 4.0
South Africa 18.4
New Zealand 18.0
Australia 17.9
CANADA 8.9
USA 8.3
Source: United Nations Global Illicit Drug Trends 2002
AMSTERDAM -- It takes about a five-minute walk after arriving at Central
Station to realize you've just landed on Fantasy Island. With working girls
shaking their thing and beckoning for business in bay windows, shopping
that has an eye-opening amount of pornography and the tangy smell of
marijuana wafting out every time a coffee shop door is opened, the
anything-goes fantasy is not exactly for everyone.
Touring the Red Light District, the lovely canals that run through it and
the historic architecture is akin to studying the brain of an aging rock
star who was blessed with a prodigious sense of taste.
It's just one small part of one city in the Netherlands, but it has become
a flashpoint for the international marijuana debate, a legendary tourist
stop which deals marijuana as regularly as Las Vegas dealers end up with
blackjack.
A city, and a country, where people can wander into certain cafes and buy a
small amount of cannabis without fearing arrest or prosecution. A drug
policy some say is the most effective in the world.
"In Holland, we believe you can do what you want as long as you don't
bother anyone else," said Wernard Bruining, who was one of the first to
have a coffee shop licensed to sell pot in the 1970s.
Back in 1972, the founder of the Mellow Yellow Coffeeshop had no idea he
was part of a revolution which would be watched and studied by the rest of
the world.
"Marijuana won't go away," Bruining said. "I think that one day all of
Europe will be like Holland."
It's already happening as Great Britain, Belgium and Switzerland, among
other countries, are moving toward more liberal treatment of marijuana.
In the Netherlands, marijuana is not legal although it would be hard to
tell after walking by many of the 300-odd Amsterdam coffee shops which sell
it. "Coffee shop" in Holland literally means a place which sells weed.
Marijuana is treated separately from hard drugs and is "depenalized,"
essentially a national tolerance policy which allows people to carry 30
grams and less. The coffee shops can sell customers no more than five grams
at a time.
It has created a rather indifferent view of pot from the nation's 15
million citizens and one of the lowest pot-smoking rates in the
industrialized world. The latest United Nations study on global drug trends
shows that the Netherlands wouldn't even crack the top 50 in marijuana
consumption.
The annual percentage of people older than 15 who smoke pot in the
Netherlands is 4.1%. In comparison, 8.9% of Canadians do.
"Marijuana is just no big deal here," said Henk Lokhorst, who lives just
outside Amsterdam. "It's lost that taboo feel. Most of my friends don't
smoke, it's just not a part of their lives and not something you think
about. In Canada, there is still that allure, that idea of a forbidden fruit.
"The Dutch don't have these coffee shops because they want to smoke pot.
They have them for two reasons: One, the system seems to work and two,
people are making a lot of money."
It's still attractive to tourists. There is no question marijuana is a big
draw, right there with prostitutes and Van Gogh.
The coffee shops are busiest on weekend evenings when the young from all
over the world gather to smoke and test their intellect and pickup lines
with one another.
Stacy and Lynn are 18 years old and from Ontario. They'd rather their
mother not know what they were up to on vacation. To them, Amsterdam is Oz.
"You get a strange feeling when you walk into a coffee shop in Amsterdam,"
said Stacy while in the Green House, a famed award-winning coffee house.
"You're intimidated. For a moment you think you're doing something dirty.
And then it goes away and soon it's just part of the culture. You look
around and I guarantee you will think 'What is wrong with this? Why does
this upset so many people?' "
The girls are boggled by the menus they've sifted through: Haze Skunk, Maui
Mist, Red Dawn, White Widow, Blueberry Bubblegum, Silver Haze, and the
Super Skunk.
"And here I thought pot was just pot," Lynn said.
The girls spend 15 euros -- about $25 Cdn. -- on some recommended Maui Mist
and are set for the night.
Coffee-shop owners estimate that for every 20 euros tourists pay for
marijuana, they'll spend 200 euros on food and lodging in the city.
'Experienced Hitter'
The goal of the country's drug policy was to emphatically distinguish soft
drugs such as marijuana from hard drugs like heroin, cocaine and amphetamines.
The coffee shops are designed to be the conduit of that policy. They can
only sell to people over 18 years old, are rarely licensed to sell alcohol,
can't advertise and can never sell hard drugs.
At the Green House, as is the case in most good coffee shops, the pot is
strong. On the menu a brand called AK-47 is nicknamed "The Killer." Its
tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) level is somewhere between 18%-22%, or about
three times higher than the average of what you find in Canada.
"I wanted the strongest stuff they had and they sold me this for 12 euros,"
American tourist Eddie Ponika said. "I'm an experienced hitter and this
stuff nearly knocked me out. Wow! I'd like to take this home."
Maybe not quite the desired effect Green House proprietor Arjan was going
for, but close enough.
"The growing of stronger and different varieties of marijuana was the base
in the plan for keeping a lot of people from using hard drugs," Arjan said.
"The lack of good cannabis is the start for some people to use hard drugs."
Coffee shops are an eclectic mix of bar-like atmospheres as well as
Jamaican and eastern-Asian themed rooms.
In the Mellow Yellow on a recent visit, five people are there, one a
professional reading a local newspaper, a couple on a date and two
20-something tourists, coughing as they roll cone after cone. On the walls
are images of Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd and Bob Weir.
"Marijuana is the only drug I would touch and that's just once a week,"
said Gries van der Lingen, an Amsterdam salesman. "It's just a peaceful
getaway from my work day."
Popular coffee shops can make more than one million euros a year. A gram of
marijuana costs between 8-15 euros, on average.
There are also other "Smart Shops" throughout Amsterdam where you can
legally buy magic mushrooms and herbal pills like ephedra and "natural
ecstasy."
In the Red Light District tourists can't walk half a block without being
asked to buy cocaine or ecstasy. The dealers work near cops, half-heartedly
trying to conceal what they're doing but the cops don't really care,
understanding it would be pointless to take these people to jail.
"They sell the hard drugs here to prey on the tourists, that's where the
market is," said police officer Adriaan Simonszoon.
What seems like an abundance of hard drugs and addicts is deceiving because
it is concentrated in one place: The Red Light District.
A study by the Ministry of Health in the Netherlands comparing drug use
between its country and the U.S. shows 10.5% of Americans have used cocaine
at some point in their lives, which is five times more than in the Netherlands.
Among 13 member states of the European Union, the Netherlands ranks 11th in
terms of hard-drug addicts.
"The vast majority of Dutch cannabis users do not try hard drugs," said
Dirk J. Korf of University of Amsterdam Drug Research.
Political Reality
Although the coffee shop system has been effective, there are many
opponents who would like to see them closed. It's clear there will be some
changes as a new coalition government -- led by the Christian Democratic
Appeal, a conservative party -- takes charge. The coalition has said it
would like to shut down half of the 800 coffee shops in the Netherlands.
"It would be a sweet thing if we could eventually retract
decriminalization," Piet-Hein Donner, the acting Dutch minister of justice,
said recently.
But he admitted the government was stuck with a political reality of the
current landscape and thought it best to give priority to tackling other
forms of crime.
[SIDEBAR]
SMOKIN'
Annual prevalence of use as percentage of the population aged 15 and above.
Ireland 9.4%
UK 9.4
France 7.4
Switzerland 7.0
Spain 7.0
Germany 6.0
Denmark 4.4
Netherlands 4.1
Luxembourg 4.0
South Africa 18.4
New Zealand 18.0
Australia 17.9
CANADA 8.9
USA 8.3
Source: United Nations Global Illicit Drug Trends 2002
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