A Column by John Sinclair
Highest greetings from New Orleans, where I’ve just arrived after spending the winter in Amsterdam and where I plan to be in residence for the next five months. So I’ll be reporting from the Crescent City for the foreseeable future while first enjoying the Carnival season through the first half of February and then working with Dave Brinks, Cyril Neville, Big Chief Monk Boudreaux, Rev. Goat Carson and a host of others to help establish the New Orleans Institute for the Imagination, opening on March 4.
Amsterdam was particularly crowded for the New Year’s Eve festivities again this year with visitors from all over Europe and America who imagined that they were enjoying their last days of access to the city’s weed-friendly coffeeshops and the international cannabis culture celebrated therein. The Dutch government had intended to institute its new weit pass first on January 1, 2012 and then on January 1, 2013, and the hype had spread world-wide for the second straight year.
But as New Year’s Day dawned Radio Netherlands Worldwide reported Foreigners Still Welcome in Dutch Coffeeshops: “A new law has gone into effect today requiring Dutch coffeeshops - cafes where cannabis is sold - to check whether customers legally reside in the Netherlands. Justice Minister Ivo Opstelten says the measure is needed to reduce the problems created by foreigners coming to the Netherlands to purchase soft drugs.
”Many Dutch mayors, particularly in the main cities, oppose the new law and do not intend to enforce it. They say it will cause more problems because foreigners will purchase their drugs from dealers on the streets. As a result, over half of all coffeeshops say they will continue to sell soft drugs to foreigners.”
As I left Amsterdam in mid-January everything was back to normal, the coffeeshops were unharmed, business over the counter continued as usual, and all was well in the rosy “gray area” that helps make visiting or residing in Amsterdam such a wonderful experience.
There’s a lot to be said for the level of civilization attained by the coffeeshop culture. As a veteran of 50 years of smoking marijuana for my personal health and recreational delight in every conceivable sort of setting, there’s nothing like the coffeeshop to provide the perfect public environment for relaxing and getting high, meeting your pals and making new friends, listening to music and doing whatever you wanna after you buy your smoke across the counter, choose your delivery system and light up your cannabis product of choice.
Coffeeshops come in many varieties, shaped by their location and the imagination and personal taste of the proprietors, but there’s a cannabis counter where up to 5 grams of marijuana and hashish are vended to patrons, a bar of some sort where coffee, tea, fruit juices, hot chocolate and waters are served, and a seating arrangement that varies with the internal architecture of each venue from a few rows of stools and countertops to a few tables and chairs to some combination of the two.
Except for the chains like Bulldog and Greenhouse where commerce is paramount, each coffeeshop is a unique installation created by its owners and dedicated to the comfort and efficient servicing of its clientele. In the Centrum or “downtown” of Amsterdam where I spend most of my time, the coffeeshop patronage consists of a mixture of “drug tourists” (people like ourselves) and locals, often friends of the proprietors and staff or folks who are attracted to the particular menu of cannabis offerings which differs from shop to shop.
As a person who has chosen the path of the bodhisattva in my old age, while not traveling I spend most of my days in coffeeshops wherever I happen to be. I get my coffee, read my newspapers, do my daily crossword puzzles, read books, go outside to smoke my cigarettes and my joints, settle down at a table with my laptop and work on my many projects for hours at a time. This way I can preserve and extend the mental world in which I live without being holed up in a room somewhere away from human contact.
In Amsterdam I spend most afternoons and evenings until closing time at the 420 Café, where I serve as the Poet in Residence and enjoy the house policy of permitting its patrons to smoke pretty much what we want to. The 420 music system is dedicated to what the proprietor calls Classic Rock & FZ, or Frank Zappa, alternating tunes from the old days with selections from the Café’s complete collection of every track ever recorded by Frank Zappa and his minions
I sit ensconced at one of two small tables in the back of the place while all around me people from all over come and go, sitting and talking and laughing, playing chess or cards or backgammon, toking from vaporizer bags or bongs and other glassware provided by the house, scrutinizing the offerings at the hash counter and making their selections of weed and hashish and smoking them with their companions from England, Ireland, Greece, Spain, Italy, France, Morocco, Turkey, Japan and the United States, Mexico, Canada, Chile or Brazil.
There’s no hassles, no arguments, no raised voices, no fear, no hatred—only good clean fun among consenting adults smoking the cannabis products of their choice in the delivery systems they prefer, assisted and serviced in their simple pleasures by the splendid staff of the 420 Cafe.
Why can’t we do this in America? In Flint or Detroit or Ann Arbor?
Listening to the President’s inaugural address on Martin Luther King Day I was moved by the progressive measures he was calling for but waited in vain for his announcement that he considered it imperative to bring an end to the asinine War On Drugs, legalize marijuana and all recreational drugs and free the prisoners of war from the nation’s vast penitentiary system.
Particularly with respect to marijuana, no one knows better than President Obama—referred to by his school friends as “The Interceptor” for his skill at inserting himself into .the toking order more than once per round—that his government’s war on marijuana users is a massively cruel farce meant simply to terrorize the populace and punish smokers for not going along with the program.
With medical marijuana now legal in 18 states and recreational use legalized in Colorado and the state of Washington, the Obama administration claims finally to be "in the midst of a serious national conversation on marijuana."
“United States Drug Czar” Gil Kerlikowske made this comment on the White House's citizens' petition website 'We the People' in response to the nearly 84,000 people who had expressed their support for the question: Should the federal government "remove marijuana from the federal Controlled Substance Act and allow the states to decide how they want to regulate it."
The czar asserts that "the Justice Department is reviewing the legalization initiatives passed in Colorado and Washington" and trying to figure out “how you reconcile a federal law that still says marijuana is a federal offense and state laws that say that it's legal."
The government should be trying harder to reconcile the federal law with the beliefs of its citizens, who are increasingly in favor of getting the feds out of marijuana entirely. Micah Cohen reports in Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight column in the New York Times that a YouGov poll has found a majority of adults believing the federal government should not enforce federal laws in Washington and Colorado, and should “exempt adults who follow state law from enforcement.”
A recent Quinnipiac University poll found a majority supporting outright legalization, 51 percent to 44 percent. And a CBS News survey showed that 59 percent of adults said the question of legalization should be left to the states, rather than the federal government.
What should the Obama administration do? Duh! Admit that the federal position is completely unfounded and Legalize Marijuana once and for all!
© 2013 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
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