Home | Community | Message Board

Sporeworks
This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.


Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

Shop: Bridgetown Botanicals Bridgetown Botanicals   Kraken Kratom Red Vein Kratom   Original Sensible Seeds Autoflowering Cannabis Seeds   Left Coast Kratom Kratom Powder For Sale

Jump to first unread post Pages: 1
InvisibleGreen_T
 User Gallery

Registered: 10/02/08
Posts: 4,042
Loc: UK Flag
Dutch coffee shops fear coalition crackdown
    #13417637 - 11/01/10 11:05 AM (13 years, 6 months ago)

Dutch coffee shops fear coalition crackdown
1 November 2010 - BBC

"This is old Dutch skunk…it gets you medium stoned."

Jason den Enting, the general manager of the Dampkring chain of coffee shops in Amsterdam, is giving me his sales patter.

"It's a little bit physical, makes you relaxed…"

His enthusiasm is obvious, but beneath it he is worried.

The traditional Dutch tolerance of the sale of small amounts of marijuana through licensed "coffee shops" is under severe strain.

Coffee shops emerged in the mid 1970s. The idea was to create a safe environment for adults to smoke cannabis but other illegal substances were banned.

They have actually been under pressure since the 1990s, mainly from licensing laws.

At their peak there were around 1,200 but the total currently stands at 700.

Political battle

And now, from Mr den Enting's perspective, the knives are really out.

On 14 October a new coalition government was sworn in. Part of the coalition agreement stipulates that coffee shops "will become private clubs". In other words, no tourists.

"[It's] simple politics. They have problems and they only talk about Muslim kids and coffee shops. It won't put us out of business but some people could lose their jobs."

And while Dampkring could survive, others might not.

Unsurprisingly, the customers I met took a dim view of the proposals.

Isabelle, from Worcestershire, was typical: "It would change the whole vibe, people would be less chilled out, turn to alcohol probably".

But for many in the Netherlands the new stricter policy is part of a battle to protect their quality of life. And the small town of Roosendaal is on the frontline.

Just a few miles from the border with Belgium, by 2007 it had become a centre for drug tourists with 12,000 arriving every week. This in an area with a population of just 10,000.

The council had thought the problem arose from unlicensed "selling points". But research from 2008 revealed that 90% of the drugs tourists were in fact simply coming for the regulated coffee shops. The solution was simple - close them all down.

Core contradiction

By spring 2010 the drugs tourists had all but disappeared and so too had some very profitable businesses.

A tourist might spend 30 euros (£26) per visit, implying weekly revenues for the town's eight coffee shops of up to 324,000 euros (£283,000).

Ben van der Hoeven, a local official, shows me Molenstraat (Mill Street) where the coffee shops were massed. It is a five-metre-wide road and the young tourists driving along here caused mayhem.

"There were parking problems, intimidation," he said. "Now we are really giving back Molenstraat to the inhabitants of Roosendaal. It's a shopping street again."

It is exactly the grim experience of towns like Roosendaal that has made coffee shops such a target for the government.

But banning tourists from buying soft drugs will not resolve the core contradiction created by the toleration policy, according to Tim Boekhout van Solinge, a criminologist at the University of Utrecht.

"Coffee shops are allowed to sell small quantities of cannabis to consumers, but how do they get the products? They have to buy it on the illegal market."

The illegality of cannabis is a surprise to many people from outside the Netherlands but it is a fact that creates several anomalies.

The first is that while thousands of people are happily smoking the drug in coffee shops, the police are busy trying to restrict the supply.

Another criminologist, Nicole Maalste from the University of Tilburg, says marijuana producers are a currently a top priority for the police, and it shows - prices have doubled in the last couple of years.

Shades of grey

Some coffee shop owners have even been arrested on their way to work, caught with their daily stock of dope.

But perhaps the most intriguing element of the coffee shop conundrum is that the Dutch cannot legislate their way out of it.

Dr Boekhout van Solinge points out that on four occasions there has been a parliamentary majority for the full legalisation of production and each time the government has refused to adopt new laws.

"This is a small country and there is the almost constant pressure from the US not to liberalise further," he said.

For some though, this indicates Dutch society is finally waking up to the dangers of its traditional liberalism.

Among them is Nicolien Van Vroonhoven, from the Christian Democratic Alliance, part of the governing coalition.

She cites the problems of addiction and the ease with which soft drug use can turn into the use of hard drugs.

"In tolerating the coffee shops you deny all the problems caused by cannabis."

Full prohibition though is still a long way off and resistance to the current "members only" proposals could end in court.

But the debate in Holland does at least highlight the imperfections of the country's policy.

Coffee shop owners have always operated in shades of grey, it seems now the Dutch public wants things in black or white.


--------------------

"I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man" - Thomas Jefferson

Legalize Meth | Drug War Victims

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineChronicCluster
Lord Cephalopod is Reborn!
Male User Gallery


Folding@home Statistics
Registered: 04/28/10
Posts: 1,348
Last seen: 12 years, 2 months
Re: Dutch coffee shops fear coalition crackdown [Re: Green_T]
    #13417714 - 11/01/10 11:28 AM (13 years, 6 months ago)

God Damnit Holland.  America is trying to take a big step forward, and Y'all are trying to take a giant step back.


--------------------
This site needs some submissions.  You should probably help out...
NawMean?

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Offlineukshroomer
Law Abider


Registered: 11/08/09
Posts: 484
Loc: Netherlands
Last seen: 4 days, 10 hours
Re: Dutch coffee shops fear coalition crackdown [Re: ChronicCluster]
    #13418169 - 11/01/10 01:32 PM (13 years, 6 months ago)

Quote:

ChronicCluster said:
God Damnit Holland.  America is trying to take a big step forward, and Y'all are trying to take a giant step back.


I know man.. this is fucking ridiculous.. Do you know how much money the Dutch will lose if the ban coffeeshops from selling to tourists??


--------------------

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Offlineidunno
PinkWebBuffalo
 User Gallery


Registered: 03/02/10
Posts: 1,087
Last seen: 12 years, 9 months
Re: Dutch coffee shops fear coalition crackdown [Re: ukshroomer]
    #13418219 - 11/01/10 01:43 PM (13 years, 6 months ago)

What they should do, Is make a city for tourist-kinda like we have Las vegas -could you imagine the people of vegas outlawing gambling-it would go back to desert- You danes better break out your windmills and woodenshoes-


--------------------
The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic..  Josef Stalin

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Jump to top Pages: 1

Shop: Bridgetown Botanicals Bridgetown Botanicals   Kraken Kratom Red Vein Kratom   Original Sensible Seeds Autoflowering Cannabis Seeds   Left Coast Kratom Kratom Powder For Sale


Similar ThreadsPosterViewsRepliesLast post
* Dutch Coffee Shops Close as Authorities Weed out Drug Tourists veggieM 4,211 12 05/02/07 02:26 PM
by CUBErt
* Access to Dutch 'coffee shops' could be cut for foreigners veggieM 2,466 9 11/21/04 09:18 PM
by Lifenergy
* Dutch coffee shops here to stay veggieM 1,718 4 04/19/07 07:54 PM
by FoURtWeNTy420
* Dutch 'coffee shops' largely in criminal hands veggieM 1,086 1 07/08/05 04:34 AM
by Seuss
* Dutch take sober look at pot laws veggieM 854 0 01/01/06 10:20 AM
by veggie
* Dutch to ban drug tourists from coffee shops veggieM 2,887 15 05/21/05 07:05 AM
by delta9
* Mayors back legalisation of cannabis. (Dutch News) Annom 2,056 3 04/28/05 04:06 AM
by Annom
* Dutch Ban on Smoking Hits Pot Businesses Lana 4,083 8 06/18/03 05:06 AM
by cybrbeast

Extra information
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: motaman, veggie, Alan Rockefeller, Mostly_Harmless
1,154 topic views. 0 members, 6 guests and 3 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ]
Search this thread:

Copyright 1997-2024 Mind Media. Some rights reserved.

Generated in 0.022 seconds spending 0.007 seconds on 14 queries.