Pubdate: Mon, 28 Apr 2003
Source: Edmonton Sun (CN AB)
Copyright: 2003, Canoe Limited Partnership.
Contact:  http://www.fyiedmonton.com/htdocs/edmsun.shtml
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/135
Author: Jason Botchford, Sun Media
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

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

Grass 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 weed-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 spliffs 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.

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 pot you'll 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."

Close Enough

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 workday."

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.

Many Opponents

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.
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MAP posted-by: Jackl