http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/netherlands/100202/marijuana-cannabis-amsterdam-coffee-shop
And what's more, Dutch youth aren't even interested in smoking weed.
By Paul Ames - GlobalPost
Published: February 3, 2010
AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands In the back street cannabis den, a
French-speaking Arab youth with a pierced lower lip and a rhinestone
encrusted baseball cap leans across the bar to order his fix of choice.
"Hot chocolate, please," he intones in heavily accentuated English.
"With whipped cream?" asks the fresh-faced young barrista in the 420 Cafe.
"Yes, please."
A group of teenage English boys, their polite manners contrasting
with the hair-raising heavy metal designs on their T-shirts, is also
drinking the warm, frothy brew. Above them a large flat screen TV is
showing a documentary about Antarctic bird life.
A penguin protects her chicks from a hungry gull as two Spanish girls
debate whether to get high on "White Widow," "Blueberry" brands
from the marijuana menu or to take a slice of the peanut butter and
white chocolate weed-laced "space cake."
From inside this cozy, 100-year-old-bar-turned-hash-house it appears
the Amsterdam drug scene has mellowed since the Dutch government
began to "decriminalize" cannabis in the late 1970s.
"Some specimens of my tribe, and I think I can include myself, are
considered to be respectable citizens," said Michael Veling, owner of
the 420 Cafe.
"We even have a working relationship with the tax office," added
Veling, a spokesman for the Cannabis Retailers Association which
represents many of the more than 700 "coffee shops" that openly serve
the drug in the Netherlands.
After 30 years of high times, Amsterdam continues to attract waves of
youthful tourists eager to smoke a reefer or two without having to
look over their shoulder for the cops. However Dutch attitudes are
changing. Successive conservative-led governments have tightened
restrictions on cannabis sales, while local youngsters seem
increasingly indifferent to the coffee shops' charms.
A report from European Union's drug monitoring center made headlines
in November when it showed young Dutch people lagged well behind many
of their European neighbors when it came to smoking weed.
According to the survey, 11.4 percent of Dutch people aged 15 to 24
had consumed cannabis over the previous year, down from 14.3 percent
eight years earlier. The Netherlands was ranked 13th out of 23
nations way behind countries such as Spain, Italy and the Czech
Republic, which register more than double the Dutch rate.
In the 420 Cafe, the only locals in view were a group of 50-something
friends of the owner nodding contentedly to the Frank Zappa and Jimi
Hendrix tunes coming from the sound system.
"It's not as exciting [for Dutch kids] as it is in other countries
and we had education together with the tolerant attitude, so our kids
know about drugs," said Veling.
"Our customers are mainly from England and the United States, but
because of the economic crisis the percentage of continental
Europeans has risen," he said. "Last summer we saw the first wave of
Chinese middle class, that's a very promising market."
Veling is perhaps unique among coffee shop owners in that he is also
an active member and one-time city councilor with the conservative
Christian Democratic Appeal party of Prime Minister Jan Peter
Balkenende, which has done much to clamp down on the Dutch dope trade
in recent years.
Coffee shops have seen the maximum amount they can sell customers
reduced from 30 grams to 5 grams. In 2007 a ban on cannabis outlets
serving alcohol was enforced, meaning coffee shop owners had to
choose between booze or pot which explains why the strongest drinks
at Cafe 420 are coffee, tea and chocolate. Moreover, advertising for
cannabis is banned, so while souvenir shops selling T-shirts
festooned with marijuana-leaf designs abound, coffee shops are not
allowed to use the image.
Many city councils prohibit the opening of new coffee shops and are
quick to shut down any that break the rules. A ban on smoking tobacco
in all Dutch cafes and bars hit the coffee shops hard when it was
introduced in July 2008, since cannabis cigarettes are often mixed
with tobacco. Now the rule is widely ignored.
"There are all kinds of ridiculous regulations," said Fredrick Polak,
a veteran campaigner for more liberal drug laws. "It does not work,
it is counterproductive … the state has no business interfering with
individual grown-up citizens and what they want to put in their bodies."
Polak, a white-haired, 67-year-old psychiatrist who works at
Amsterdam's drug dependency unit, said Dutch authorities have caved
into pressure from neighboring nations concerned that so many young
people were buying cannabis in the Netherlands to take back home.
French, Belgian and German authorities have been particularly worried
about a proliferation of outlets in border cities, so the Dutch
government has sought to crack down on "drug tourism."
The cities of Bergen op Zoom and Rosendaal near the Belgian border
closed down six of their eight coffee shops last year after residents
complained about rowdy behavior from an estimated 25,000 drug
tourists passing through every week.
In the southeastern city of Maastricht, authorities have proposed
making coffee shops members-only clubs, effectively banning foreign
day-trippers. The country's largest coffee shop, Checkpoint in the
southern border town of Terneuzen, was closed down in 2008 at a time
when it was reportedly serving 3,000 customers a day.
Polak complains that criminal elements continue to play a leading
role in the cannabis trade due to an anomaly in the laws: While the
retailing is tolerated, wholesale trade remains illegal, meaning
coffee shop owners often have to get their supplies from criminal
networks, which are also involved in illegal exports of the drug and
violent turf wars.
"With our system, for people who want to smoke marijuana it's very
pleasant, but on the supply side here there is no control, it's still
completely illegal, so the wrong people make very much money," Polak said.
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