ENTREPRENEURS and cannabis users recently smoked, cut and rolled hashish and marijuana at a five-day "Cannabizness" workshop teaching participants how to run Dutch-style coffee shops abroad. Students at the "Coffee shop College", run by a cannabis cafe owner in the city of Haarlem, said they hoped to be able to ply the trade in licensed shops in their own countries as pressure to relax laws prohibiting the drug grows across Europe. The course aimed to give its participants experience working in Haarlema's coffee shops serving hashish and marijuana. [continues 334 words]
THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- A large majority of legislators in the Dutch parliament's lower chamber said Monday that they will support a government-backed bill to legalize marijuana prescriptions for severely ill patients. The lower house is expected to vote next week on the proposal to let doctors prescribe marijuana produced by government-regulated growers for medicinal purposes. The bill also needs approval by the Senate, expected later this year, before it can take effect. If it is passed, two growers selected by the Dutch government will become the first legal marijuana producers in Europe. [continues 113 words]
THE HAGUE, Netherlands - A large majority of legislators in the Dutch parliament's lower chamber said Monday that they will support a government-backed bill to legalize marijuana prescriptions for severely ill patients. The lower house is expected to vote next week on the proposal to let doctors prescribe marijuana produced by government-regulated growers for medicinal purposes. The bill also needs approval by the Senate, expected later this year, before it can take effect. If it is passed, two growers selected by the Dutch government will become the first legal marijuana producers in Europe. [continues 113 words]
THE HAGUE, Netherlands - A large majority of legislators in the Dutch parliament'slower chamber said Monday that they will support a government-backed bill to legalize marijuana prescriptions for severely ill patients. [end]
The Dutch government is to start giving heroin to addicts. The controversial move follows a three-year study of 549 addicts by the Central Committee on the Treatment of Heroin Addicts. They found that patients on a combination of methadone and heroin were less likely to die, committed less crime, used less cocaine and were in better physical, social and mental shape than those given methadone alone (see "Fixed up", p 34). They hope that the move will help the country's 8000 or so heroin addicts who've failed to kick their habit on a methadone programme. [end]
Even In Pot Heaven Holland, My Job Tending Buds Makes Me Paranoid The Netherlands -- I am beyond vacationing in Holland. When weeks have turned into months, one must be creative to meet the basic requirements of survival. In France you can pick grapes, in the Okanagan there are apples, and in Egypt there's work on watermelon farms. In Holland, if you're lucky, there's cutting weed in commercial-scale growing operations. I still can't see past my own wall of paranoia to sit on a park bench and spark up a fat one while families stroll by on a Sunday afternoon. [continues 783 words]
HAARLEM, Netherlands, (Reuters) - Entrepreneurs and cannabis connoisseurs this week smoked, cut and rolled hashish and marijuana at a five-day "Cannabizness" workshop teaching participants how to run Dutch-style coffee shops abroad. Students at the "Coffee shop College" run by a cannabis cafe owner in the sedate city of Haarlem said they hoped to be able to ply the trade in licensed shops in their own countries as pressure to relax laws prohibiting the drug grows across Europe. The course aims to give its participants experience working in Haarlem's coffee shops serving hashish and marijuana, testing and grading the wares. It also provides information on the unique Dutch experience regulating 900 licensed coffee shops. [continues 747 words]
The Netherlands took a highly controversial step towards liberalising already lax drug laws yesterday when the government came out in favour of giving free heroin to addicts. Encouraged by five-year trials on addicts in six of the country's largest cities, the government formally asked parliament to endorse proposals to hand out heroin, in combination with methadone, to addicts deemed "beyond help". The plans have caused disquiet among some sections of society, where sceptics feel that heroin addicts will receive better "treatment" than many people who suffer from problems that are not self-inflicted. [continues 284 words]
VENLO, Netherlands - Each day, thousands of giggling, jewel-eyed Germans flood the streets of this beleaguered border town, where soft drugs are legal, the locals have lost patience and authorities are planning a solution that's typically Dutch in its practicality: Drive-through marijuana stores. The idea is for Teutonic drug tourists to turn around and go home after making quick buys at two to-go shops that authorities want to place near the border. Venlo residents call the solution McDope. [continues 857 words]
A Dutch Town Near Germany Struggles To Bring Drug Traffic Under Some Control VENLO, Netherlands Each day thousands of giggling Germans flood the streets of this beleaguered border town a place where soft drugs are legal, the locals are fed up, and authorities have a solution that's thoroughly, pragmatically Dutch: Drivethrough marijuana stores. The idea is to make it easy for Teutonic drug tourists to turn around and go home after making quick buys at two drugstogo shops that authorities want to place near the border. [continues 858 words]
The combined prescribing of heroin and methadone on medical grounds to long term users of heroin is safe and manageable and has health benefits over ordinary methadone programmes, two large randomised controlled trials in the Netherlands have concluded. Prescribing heroin to up to 2000 addicts for whom no other medical treatment has proved effective now looks likely. The trials were carried out on 549 patients in six cities between 1998 and 2001 by the Central Committee on the Treatment of Heroin Addicts. The committee was set up by the Dutch health minister in 1996 to look at the intended and unintended effects of medical prescription of heroin to "chronic, therapy resistant addicts" (BMJ 1995;310:1625). [continues 326 words]
THE Netherlands has sent a naval frigate to the Antilles to hunt down cocaine dealers and ordered emergency prison cells to be set up after it was revealed that drug smugglers were being allowed to walk free because of overcrowded jails and courts. The emergency measures were announced last week after senior customs officials at Schiphol, the Netherlands' main airport, wrote a letter to the Amsterdam daily Het Parool last month revealing that they had been ordered to stop arresting cocaine smugglers arriving from the Dutch Antilles and Surinam. [continues 511 words]
The Dutch Government is bringing in emergency measures to tackle the sharp rise in drug smuggling through Amsterdam's Schiphol airport. The move follows public outrage after it was revealed that instead of being locked up, some drugs couriers arrested at the airport have been released with a court summons because of a shortage of prison cells. Prime Minister Wim Kok said that until now it had been too easy for drugs smugglers to get into the planes and that all flights must be so tightly controlled that the drugs couriers won't want to come through Schiphol. [continues 317 words]
AMSTERDAM -- While Canadians struggle with the question of who can legally smoke marijuana, the Dutch continue to celebrate the answer they have embraced for more than two decades -- everybody over 18. Amsterdam, in fact, has a museum devoted exclusively to the somewhat-legal psychotropic herb, the only one of its kind in Europe. Located at Oudezijds Achterburgwal 148, sandwiched between two canals next to the famous red light district, the museum is worth a visit if you want to see something you can't see at home. [continues 862 words]
People who use the drug Ecstasy appear to suffer long-term memory damage even after they give it up, a new study from the Netherlands concludes. The study, published last week in The Archives of General Psychiatry, compared 22 recent Ecstasy users, 16 people who said they had used the drug but not for at least a year, and 13 people who had never taken it. Recent users and ex-users scored equally poorly in comparison to the control group on tests of recall and verbal memory. The worst scores were by the people who reported the highest doses of Ecstasy. [continues 124 words]
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - The Dutch Cabinet approved a bill Friday that would allow pharmacies to fill marijuana prescriptions and for the government to pay for them. Parliament was expected to vote in the next few months on the proposal to put medicinal marijuana on the national health care plan. If the bill is passed by the 150-seat legislature, pharmacies would be supplied with "pharmaceutical quality" marijuana after testing by a government agency. Although the sale of marijuana is technically illegal, Dutch authorities tolerate the sale of small amounts in hundreds of so- called "coffee shops" that operate openly. A gram of marijuana costs about $4. [continues 271 words]
AMSTERDAM -- The Dutch Cabinet approved a bill Friday that would allow pharmacies to fill marijuana prescriptions and for the government to pay for them. Parliament was expected to vote in the next few months on the proposal to put medicinal marijuana on the national health care plan. If the bill is passed by the 150-seat legislature, pharmacies would be supplied with "pharmaceutical quality" marijuana after testing by a government agency. Although the sale of marijuana is technically illegal, Dutch authorities tolerate the sale of small amounts in hundreds of so-called "coffee shops" that operate openly. A gram of marijuana costs about $4. Under the new law, most users would have the cost of their joints paid by the government as long as they have a doctor's prescription. [end]
Inside Netherlands
