Pubdate: Fri, 4 Jan 2008
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Page: Front Page, First Column
Copyright: 2008 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Geraldine Baum, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Column One

SEX, DRUGS AND SECOND THOUGHTS

Not Quite Anything Goes in the Netherlands These Days. Many Dutch 
Think Their Open Lifestyle Has Gone Too Far; Others Say New Restrictions Have.

Amsterdam

The vacation sort of just flew by.

After dropping their packs at a hostel, Ryan Ainsworth and his buddy 
Richie Bendelow found a shop selling 500 herbal potions that promised 
to make them high and happy in 500 ways. But the young British 
tourists went right for the hallucinogenic mushrooms, packaged in 
clear plastic containers just like the ordinary ones at the 
greengrocer back home.

The pair took the tips sheet that advised first boiling the mushrooms 
into a tea "to speed up the effect." It also warned against taking 
them with hard drugs or alcohol but that "a marijuana joint is no 
problem and can give you a positive, relaxing feeling."

These guys didn't need advice -- they'd cut loose before in this 
haven of libertine values and elegant canals. After forking over $24, 
they made their way to the lush Vondelpark and between them gobbled 
up the entire box.

The next day, as they were leaving a coffeehouse where they'd bought 
half a gram of marijuana, they had little to say about the afternoon 
in the park. "Hey, it's holiday in Holland," said Ainsworth, a 
22-year-old kayaking instructor. "Anything goes."

But it may be last call for drugs, sex and live-and-let-live in the 
Netherlands, one of the most famously broad-minded countries in the world.

Prostitution, abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage and magic 
mushrooms have long been legal here, and soft drugs such as marijuana 
are technically illegal but are sold with official sanction in small 
amounts in "coffeehouses." In recent years, however, uneasiness over 
an influx of Muslim and black immigrants as well as a lifestyle that 
many believe has gone too far have shifted the Dutch mood away from 
tolerance and infinite permissiveness.

In 2006, parliament stopped coffeehouses from selling alcohol if they 
sell marijuana; now, legislators are negotiating to have them located 
at least 250 yards from schools. This year, a ban on the sale of 
hallucinogenic mushrooms goes into effect.

"I've been in this business 15 years, and we have never felt so much 
pressure," said Olaf Van Tulder, manager of the Green House, part of 
a chain of popular coffeehouses owned by a Dutchman whom High Times 
magazine has dubbed the "King of Cannabis."

It was only 10 on a recent midweek morning, but already the dealers 
at the marijuana bar in the back of the Green House were busily 
weighing marijuana on a small scale and most of the tables were taken 
by customers rolling joints.

Almost nobody was drinking coffee.

Two young Italians, who already looked a bit wasted, raised two 
fingers each and pointed to the most expensive hash on the menu, the 
Dutch Ice-Olator Supreme at $51.80 a gram. Eduardo, the affable 
dealer, poured out two grams each into a bag, showed the Italians the 
price on a calculator and waved them off with "Ciao babies!"

Business is good, sure, but the daily struggle with a new drug 
policing unit has Van Tulder feeling under siege. "Even if there's 
just a motorbike double-parked out front, they'll shut us down," he says.

Like most natives, Van Tulder, 35, doesn't use marijuana often, but 
he is concerned that conservative politics will kill Dutch culture: 
"Listen, these people want to put their religion in society, and I 
think Amsterdam is dying because of it. It's nice to escape a little 
from reality."

Joel Voordewind grew up in this city reveling in the punk music 
scene, and playing drums in a band called No Longer Music (because it 
was so loud). But he never felt comfortable with Amsterdam's drug use 
and prostitution and as a kid avoided its red-light district "because 
you'd get in trouble there."

Now this tall, boyish-looking son of an evangelical pastor is 42 and 
a member of parliament. His Christian Union Party, which bases much 
of its policy on biblical doctrine, is trying to remake a government 
that in his estimation has been morally adrift. Although his party 
controls only two of 16 ministries, it aligned with liberals to fight 
for refugees, poor families and the environment while also condemning 
homosexuality, euthanasia, abortion and youthful experimentation 
"with everything."

"The people are fed up with the lazy attitude of government. We call 
it, 'If it's forbidden, we let it go.' Like soft drugs. It's 
forbidden, but we look the other way," he said, sipping coffee in a 
bar at the Amsterdam train station. "We have a lot of that kind of 
policy, and it has given people the feeling that the government was 
telling them to go their own way."

Although tolerance and diversity have long been a matter of national 
pride, a series of shocking events has made the Dutch more open to "a 
firm government with outspoken norms and values," he said.

The killings of maverick populist politician Pim Fortuyn in 2002 and 
filmmaker Theo Van Gogh two years later, both of whom fanned fears of 
Islamic extremism, have traumatized this predominantly white, 
Christian country.

The outward-looking Dutch welcomed the newcomers -- and their mosques 
and Islamic schools -- but have grown less tolerant toward those who 
don't share their brand of tolerance. And they're also asking 
themselves why they're inviting tourists to get stoned in their parks 
and allowing graceful neighborhoods to devolve into lurid Disneylands 
with sex clubs and massage parlors.

Amsterdam has the most famous and historic red-light district in 
Western Europe. Although after eight centuries it is unlikely to 
disappear any time soon, it is in the midst of reinvention.

Last month, Amsterdam's mayor and City Council unveiled a plan to 
squeeze out brothels and escort services by forcing their owners to 
apply for permits and by raising the minimum age of prostitutes to 21 
from 18. The city is also spending $37 million to buy out a landlord 
who owns a quarter of the city's buildings where nearly naked women 
pose behind display windows, red light literally flashing over their heads.

If the City Council gets its way, windows featuring women for sale 
will give way to displays featuring women's clothes for sale, and 
historic buildings will be restored to attract upmarket hotels and 
restaurants, with the remaining brothels clustered on a just few streets.

"The romantic picture of the area is outdated if you see the abuses 
in the sex industry, and that is why the council has to act," 
Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen, a member of the Labor Party, said at a 
news conference announcing the changes. "We don't want to get rid of 
prostitution, but we do want to cut crime significantly."

Local politicians across the Netherlands have concluded that by 
legalizing prostitution in 2000, they opened up their cities to 
international crime organizations trafficking in women, children and 
hard drugs. The authorities want to wipe out the crime and are also 
weary of boozy weekend trippers ogling prostitutes and buying illegal 
drugs on the streets.

In fact, these openly seedy scenes come as a bit of a surprise in 
this beautiful city full of old churches and bikes -- about 600,000 
of them serving 750,000 people. In the central neighborhood, the 
streets are lined with 17th and 18th century buildings, many with 
stores quaintly selling clogs and wheels of cheese or old bookshops 
attracting students.

But turn a corner and there in a window like a mannequin come to life 
is a young Polish woman spilling out of her bikini. Above her window 
is a number and the red-neon tube light. As she shifts poses, with 
her shoulders back and chin out, she tries to remain perched on a high stool.

A few windows down are two older-looking Dominican women dressed in 
matching white underwear and sharing a fat joint; they look bored and 
frozen. Nearby, a girl in a black leather bathing suit -- she's Dutch 
with long blond hair -- is talking on a cellphone while winking and 
blowing kisses at a clutch of Russian men.

The men circle back a couple of times, but the Dutch girl gets to 
size them up, and when they don't look promising she slides off her 
stool and flops on a single bed in her tiny room. She closes her eyes.

Marisha Majoor, who runs the Prostitution Information Center, began 
walking these streets 20 years ago when almost all the prostitutes 
were Dutch and the trade was less organized. She eventually quit and 
started the center, a small storefront next to one of Amsterdam's 
oldest churches. It operates, more or less, like any other tourist 
gift shop, except it sells dozens of sex-related items, such as 
lipsticks in the shape of penises and refrigerator magnets featuring 
buxom prostitutes.

Majoor, now 37, is convinced that the new concern about the 
exploitation of women and crime is simply a ploy to see these areas 
gentrified and, from her perspective, only means that more 
prostitutes will be forced to work in unsafe conditions.

She also attributes the new anxiety about red-light districts to a 
fear of migrants.

"For many women in the world, working in the Netherlands is so much 
better than working in their own country," Majoor said.

While she is talking, a young British tourist stops by to find out 
how much the women in the window charge ($52 to $74 for 10 to 15 
minutes). When the young man asks about safe sex, Majoor's co-worker 
sells him a "Pleasure Guide" with the pertinent warnings and facts.

Voordewind would like to see his native city's red-light district 
radically changed. He recently proposed turning it into an artists' 
colony like Paris' Montmartre. He'd have the city buy the remaining 
windows and restore the buildings to their original beauty and open 
them for artists' studios and galleries.

"The district is now a tourist attraction not because of the nice 
buildings, but because of the windows," he said. "It's very a sad 
situation. . . . I want it completely changed."
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake