DOPE CAFE KING WAS BANK ROBBER

Dutch former body-building coach masterminding Britain's cannabis cafes is
laid back about his colourful past

Anthony Browne in Haarlem Sunday April 14, 2002 The Observer

The mastermind behind Britain's booming cannabis cafe movement was a
bank-robbing, drug-smuggling former international body-builder who is a
fugitive from French police and is threatened with extradition from several
European countries, The Observer can reveal.

Nol van Schaik, a millionaire entrepreneur from the Netherlands, who has
helped finance the first two cannabis cafes in Britain, spent four years in
prison for robbing a bank and is wanted in France and Belgium on drugs charges.

Motivated by the example of earlier Dutch cannabis activists, who changed
the law there by repeatedly testing it, he is dedicated to changing British
law. Having helped set up places where people smoke cannabis, he vows to
sell it openly in Britain.

'I want to erase denial and hypocrisy. The law is crumbling in Britain, and
I promised I would carry on testing the law until it is changed,' he said
as he rolled a joint in his cannabis museum in Holland.

Van Schaik, who coached the Dutch body-building team and still ripples with
muscles, is co-founder of the Dutch Experience, which became Britain's
first cannabis cafe, in Stockport, Greater Manchester, last September.

It has opened every day since, despite being raided by police four times
and despite his business partner, Colin Davies, a disabled man who uses
cannabis for medical reasons, being remanded in Strangeways. Van Schaik
also lent money and furniture to the Dutch Experience 2, Britain's second
coffee shop, which opened in Bournemouth a fortnight ago.

The entrepreneur, who owns three coffee shops in Haarlem in Holland, has
started courses training Britons to run their own cannabis cafes. More than
a dozen are planned.

He owns the largest cannabis museum in the world, the Global Hemp Museum in
Haarlem and promises to open one in Edinburgh.

While coach of the national team, Van Schaik owned a gym, but suffered
severe financial problems and went bankrupt six times. 'I was a
body-builder, not a book-keeper,' he said. 'I thought robbing a bank would
pay off my debts, but I ended up in jail for four years.'

Fifteen years after the crime, he now plays it down: 'I didn't hold the
gun, I only held the bag to put the money in. And nothing happened to the
staff. They got a fright, but no one was hurt.'

He and his accomplice got away with ?15,000, but were caught and sentenced
to four years in gaol.

Within a fortnight of leaving prison, friends asked him to modify a camper
van to hide 400kg of hash from Morocco. On the way back, they were caught
by the French border police.

'I didn't want to get arrested again,' he said. 'I head-butted one and I
heard them shoot at me. But I escaped through a building site and into a
ravine, where they didn't follow me. I hid in a truck and got a trip back
to Holland.'

He is still a fugitive from French police, and liable to be extradited if
he goes to Belgium or Germany. However, he is free to travel to Britain,
which will not extradite him.

He has been arrested twice in Stockport, and is awaiting trial on charges
of importation and possession of cannabis. 'If they want to put a Dutch
coffee shop owner in prison for smoking a joint twice in the UK, that would
not look good. '

Thirty years after cannabis activists got the law changed in Holland,
coffee shops are no longer contentious, and Van Schaik insists the British
have nothing to worry about: 'I don't promote the use of cannabis; I
promote the responsible use of cannabis. We don't play loud music because
people want to talk rather than dance, and they don't fight. In Haarlem, we
have no complaints about coffee shops and 8,000 complaints a year about bars.'

The Government intends to lower cannabis from a class B to a class C drug,
meaning it is still illegal, but carries smaller punishments for possession.

Van Schaik insists it is not enough.

'Class C is not liberty - it's being done to make it easier for police and
politicians, but you leave supply in the hands of criminals. Even British
MPs say you must also legalise the supply of drugs - and what is that but a
coffee shop?'