Not that I ever went to Amsterdam for the pot, but this ruling seems like it will crush some of the tourism trade. There are lots of good reasons to see the city anyway but the availability of the pot shops and sex trade always made the idea of Amsterdam more appealling somehow. It's like you were being slightly more risque going there instead of, say, Switzerland.
New Law Threatens Amsterdam’s
Cannabis Culture
(By Anthony Faiola, Washington Post, May 4, 2012)
Hendrix
(Jimi) gazes down with bloodshot eyes from a portrait on the wall. Jagger
(Mick, “Gimme Shelter”) groans on the sound system. And sitting joyous amid
clouds of swirling smoke at the 420 Cafe is Savage (Jason, of Morgantown,
W.Va.), a tourist who arrived a few days ago on one of his frequent trips to
the Netherlands. He does not come for
the tulips. Yet even as he eagerly
anticipates his turn on a joint the size of Texas in his pal’s hand, this
38-year-old visitor is troubled. Word is spreading fast through the United
Nations of Stoners: For foreign tourists — generations of whom were drawn to
this city’s open cannabis culture — these could be the last days of Purple Haze
(or Lemon Larry, White Widow, NY Diesel, Space Cake and any of the other
earthy-spicy morsels on this city’s extensive marijuana menus).
Enforcement
of a new law banning all but Dutch residents from pot “coffee shops” started in
southern cities in the Netherlands, where drug-related organized crime became
one of the main drivers of the new regulations. Roadside signs put up by
authorities across the south now bluntly warn visitors, “New Rules, No Drugs,”
with at least one cafe shut down by police for serving foreigners and several
others closing voluntarily in protest of the tourist ban. But for global Bohemia, what truly matters is
the second phase of the plan: On Jan. 1, the ban is scheduled to go into effect
across the rest of the country — the 250 cannabis cafes of Amsterdam included.
Just like that, a thriving scene where aging hippies toke with the Occupy
movement’s tweeting classes, where themed pot cafes seem to teleport you to
Paris of the 1890s, Casablanca of the 1920s, Haight-Ashbury of the 1960s, could
vanish in a puff of smoke. “This is
huge,” Savage moaned, head in hands. “I mean, how could they do this to us?”
From the
macro perspective, the move could deal a blow to global efforts to legalize
marijuana — a movement that through legal medicinal sales has been making
steady gains in the United States, where even televangelist Pat Robertson has
come out in favor of treating cannabis like alcohol in the eyes of the law.
Now, opponents could seize on the rolling back of tolerance by even the
accommodating Dutch as evidence that legalization might not work as well as
advocates claim. But for weed lovers of
the world — a group for whom Amsterdam became a sort of rite of passage and a
liberation from the confines of home — the personal loss could be incalculable.
“The coffee
shops became extensions of your living room, a place where you find a
65-year-old Brazilian lawyer talking to a 20-year-old American backpacker, both
relaxed and open because they’re smoking weed”, said Jonathan Foster, 40, a
Rhode Island musician who in 1995 opened Grey Area, Amsterdam’s only
American-owned cannabis cafe. In his
cramped space, Foster said he has helped the likes of Willie Nelson, Snoop Dogg
and Woody Harrelson get high. “Nationalities mix, people bond. The idea that
could go away is too much to imagine.”
A judge in
The Hague ruled against a legal challenge to the ban last week, but cafe owners
are appealing that decision. If their case fails, many owners say they will
simply ignore the ban and hope Amsterdam city officials — who have publicly
come out against it — will look the other way. They take stock in the fact that
it took authorities 10 years before they truly began enforcing the official ban
on alcohol and marijuana sales at the same establishments. But with national authorities insisting on
the ban, a cloud of another sort is suddenly hanging over Amsterdam. Walk through the red-light district, where
beckoning women in fishnets display themselves in dimly lit windows, pass the
bigger cafes such as the Grasshopper and Homegrown Fantasy, and soon you come
to the 420 Cafe, where you can always spot the first-timers. Fresh-faced young
things bravely walk through the door. Bravery quickly fades. Is this really,
like, legal? But eyes light up at the menu. Dude, no way. They’ve even got
hash.
Bongs,
papers and vaporizers (the “Rolls-Royce of toking”) are free with purchase,
along with a dense atmosphere rich in THC (tetrahydrocannabinol). In one little
corner, deep conversations (at least they seemed so at the time) are going on
in English, Turkish, Spanish, French and Hindi. At the register stands Steven
Pratt, 420’s budtender and sommelier of Amsterdam weeds, many of which are grown
in the Netherlands and discussed with the same academic passion as wines in
France. The new policy would see
cannabis cafes become members-only clubs, with “pot passes” to enter issued
only to registered Dutch citizens and resident foreigners. But the idea of
registration directly clashes with the notion of liberation being peddled at
cafes, and many owners and Dutch clients insist they will simply refuse to
comply.
Technically,
buying pot and hash in the Netherlands has always been illegal, but since 1976
a sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy arose over possession of less than
five grams. By the 1990s, pot coffee shops or “cannabis cafes” were issued
“toleration licenses,” effectively allowing them to sell small quantities of
soft drugs as long as they didn’t also sell alcohol. The opaque procurement of
large stocks by cafe owners clearly violates Dutch law, but authorities simply
look the other way.
Statistics
show the rate of marijuana use in the Netherlands is actually lower than in the
United States or Britain. The pushback against drug tourism came as a result of
a rise in organized crime. Opponents say the Netherlands has become the
wholesale supplier for illicit sales across Europe. In 2010 in the southern
town of Helmond, for instance, a cannabis cafe was attacked with hand grenades,
and the mayor and his family were forced into hiding after being threatened by
suspected drug runners.
In recent
years, Rotterdam and other cities have sought to curb cannabis cafes, with the
current nationwide total of 650 about half the peak numbers in the 1990s.
Nearly one-third of those are packed block to block along the pot-scented
streets of central Amsterdam, where tourists account for up to 90 percent of
the cliental at some establishments. If
the new law is rigorously applied here, cafe owners insist it will simply mark
a return to the days of unsafe street-corner deals. “You might hurt tourism and the cafes, but a
few new guidelines are not going to stop people from buying weed in Amsterdam,
trust me,” said Michael Veling, 56, owner of the 420 Cafe.
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