Pot luck for Dutch cigs ban
Wednesday July 02 2008
COUGHING and spluttering reverberated around Tweede Kamer coffee shop in Amsterdam yesterday as customers got to grips with new Dutch smoking regulations which prohibit tobacco but not marijuana.
"They're having to smoke pure weed now and they're not used to it," Frank, working behind the counter, said. "That's why there's all this coughing. It's going to be quite tricky."
The Netherlands became the latest European country, after the likes of Ireland, Britain and France, to introduce a ban on lighting up in public places.
Offenders caught puffing on a cigarette in a bar, restaurant or cafe now face fines of between €300 and €2,400. But Government lawyers confirmed yesterday the legislation only applies to tobacco. Cannabis remains subject to the country's famously liberal drug laws, which allow users to possess five grammes without fear of prosecution.
Legal experts believe that Holland's 750 or so licensed coffee shops can continue to stock and sell a maximum of 500 grams of cannabis, and their customers can continue to smoke it on the premises so long as it is not mixed with tobacco. "I'm going to be standing here watching them as they roll their joints now," said Frank, who insisted the new rules would be strictly enforced at Tweede Kamer. "If they put any tobacco in at all, I'm going to tell them to go outside.
Problem
"The only problem is that I'm a tobacco smoker. So I'll have to go outside myself." Not all coffee shops were as laid back about the law's ambiguity as Tweede Kamer, however, as they reflected upon the impact of the ban on sales of pre-rolled joints, costing about €3.50, or hashish, selling for €18 a gramme.
Jason den Enting, the manager of Dampkring in Amsterdam, for example, said: "It's the world upside down. In other countries they look for the marijuana in the cigarette. Here they look for the cigarette in the marijuana."
Amid concerns that pure cannabis could prove too strong for users accustomed to mixing it with tobacco, other coffee shops have bought vapourisers which enable the drug to be inhaled without smoking it. Others have been baking hash brownies and other delicacies containing the weed.
But many have stopped customers from smoking altogether, which critics fear will signal the end of the coffee shop industry. (© The Times, London)
- Adam Sage in Amsterdam
