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 things 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 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 pot as regularly as Las Vegas dealers blackjack.

It's a city and a country where people can wander into 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," says Wernard Bruining, who was one of the first to
have a coffee shop licensed to sell pot in the 1970s.

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 says. "I think that one day all of
Europe will be like Holland."

It's already happening as Britain, Belgium and Switzerland, as well as
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 roughly 300 Amsterdam coffee shops which
sell pot.

'Coffee shop' in Holland means a place which sells weed.

Grass is treated separately from hard drugs and is "de-penalized" --
essentially a national tolerance policy which allows people to carry up to
30 grams. Coffee shops can sell customers no more than five grams at a time.

It has created an indifferent view of pot from the nation's 15 million
people, who have one of the lowest weed-smoking rates in the industrialized
world.

The latest UN 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 is 4.1%. In Canada, it's 8.9%.

LOST 'TABOO FEEL'

"Marijuana is just no big deal here," says 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."

The coffee shops are a big draw for tourists, as are prostitutes and
Vincent van Gogh.

The shops are busiest on weekend nights, when young people from all over
the world gather to smoke spliffs and test their intellect and pickup lines.

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,"
says Stacy 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 says.

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.

The goal of Holland'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't sell hard drugs.

'EXPERIENCED HITTER'

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 18-22%, or about three times higher
than the average pot you'll find in Canada. THC is the major active
chemical in cannabis.

"I wanted the strongest stuff they had and they sold me this for 12 euros,"
American tourist Eddie Ponika says. "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 says.

"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.

On a recent visit to the Mellow Yellow, 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,"
says Gries van der Lingen, an Amsterdam salesman. "It's just a peaceful
getaway from my workday."

Popular coffee shops can make as much as $2 million a year. A gram of
marijuana costs $13-$25.

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 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," says police officer Adriaan Simonszoon.

What seems like an abundance of hard drugs and addicts is deceiving because
it's concentrated in 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, five times more than in the Netherlands.

Among the 13 member states of the European Union, the Netherlands ranks
11th in terms of hard-drug addicts.

CONSERVATIVE CHANGES

"The vast majority of Dutch cannabis users do not try hard drugs," says
Dirk J. Korf, a drug researcher at the University of Amsterdam.

Although the coffee-shop system has been effective, there are many in
Holland who would like to see them closed.

It's clear there will be 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 country.

"It would be a sweet thing if we could eventually retract
decriminalization," Piet-Hein Donner, the acting 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.

SMOKIN'

Annual prevalence of use as percentage of the population aged 15 and above.

Ireland 9.4%

U.K. 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