Amsterdam smoking ban doesn’t apply to marijuana
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
The Netherlands' famous coffee shops, where marijuana is available over the
counter, face the threat of extinction when the country goes smoke-free on 1
July.
Smoking dope is the raison d'être of the cafes which are scattered across
the country, with the greatest and most famous concentration in Amsterdam.
But when the tobacco ban comes in, the coffee shops will not be exempt.
This will lead to the paradoxical situation that only pure grass or cannabis
resin, which are not covered by the ban, can be legally smoked in the shops.
Anybody rolling a tobacco-based joint will be breaking the law – but only
because of the tobacco. "The new rule is nonsense," said Willem Panders, of
the Dutch tobacco traders' union. "It will be almost impossible to enforce
because how are you going to check if someone is smoking cannabis mixed with
tobacco, or pure cannabis?"
But despite desperate lobbying, owners have failed to get the government to
make an exception of them. "Coffee shops will be treated in the same manner
as other catering businesses," the Prime Minister, Jan Peter Balkanende,
said last week. "It would have been wrong to move towards a smoke-free
catering industry and then make an exception for coffee shops. People would
not have understood that."
At any one time up to 1,300 coffee shops are for sale across the country,
but the Dutch catering magazine Horeca Vizier reports that the figure has
jumped to 1,600 because of the ban.
Marc Jacobsen, of BCD, a national association of coffee-shop owners which
has been urging the government to give them special status, told the online
version of Der Spiegel: "In a cafe you come to drink something. In a
restaurant you come to eat. But when you come to a coffee shop you come to
smoke, so smoking has to be allowed in a coffee shop."
As in the rest of Europe the purpose of the ban is to protect the health of
staff, who at present are obliged to inhale passively other people's smoke.
But Sandy Lambrecht, the manager of the Bulldog coffee shop on the
Leidseplein in the heart of Amsterdam, said: "The new rules are absurd. You
come to a coffee shop to smoke, after all – it's ridiculous that we have to
comply. The new rules are meant to protect employees like me, but the point
is that we chose to work here."
Paul Wilhelm, the owner of De Tweede Kamer, one of Amsterdam's most famous
coffee shops, founded in 1985, argued: "If the boys are old enough to be
sent to Afghanistan, then you can't tell me that people want to protect them
from smoke in the workplace. They're old enough to decide on their own. They
can vote, they can go to war – but now they won't even be allowed to make
this decision?"
Many British pubs re-opened their gardens when the smoking ban took effect,
but most Dutch coffee shops are penned into tiny premises with no outdoor
space. The solution in Bulldog is to create a separate, walled-off space for
those who want to smoke, off-limits to staff.
"We're now having to build a new section in our coffee-shop with a glass
partition and special air filters for those who choose to smoke non-pure
cannabis," said Sandy Lambrecht. "It's a shame as it will change the very
congenial ambience in here – half of our customers will be shut off behind a
glass wall. Our customers will grumble, that's for sure."
But the Dutch Health Minister, Ab Klink, is impenitent. "A positive side
effect of the smoking ban," he said, "may be that consumers who spend the
whole day hanging out in coffee shops will find other things to do."
Cannabis cafe culture
Contrary to popular perception, cannabis is – technically – an illegal
substance in the Netherlands. However the country's pragmatic drug policy
has led to a division in the eyes of the law between "hard" drugs, such as
cocaine or heroin, and "soft", like cannabis.
Holland's policy of non-enforcement towards cannabis consumption and
possession goes back to 1976. Originally it applied to a quantity of less
than 30 grams, but the amount coffee shops are able to sell to one person is
now limited to five grams.
Cannabis cafes have to stick to strict criteria. They must be licensed,
cannot admit or sell drugs to minors under 18, and the advertisement of
drugs is banned. In April 2007, new legislation forced the coffee shops to
choose between serving alcohol and cannabis. The vast majority opted to
serve cannabis.
Although cannabis is usually mixed with tobacco and smoked in a joint, it
can be smoked – without tobacco – in a bong or pipe. It can also be consumed
as a tea or in cake form, but the effect of the drug takes much longer to be
felt.
Source : Belfast Telegraph
