FREE THE WEED 05
A Column by John Sinclair
Highest greetings from Amsterdam, the lovely little city in The Netherlands that serves as Viper Central for the pot smokers of Earth.
Amsterdam has served as a center for lightweight vice—recreational drug use, prostitution, gambling, public sexual excess—since the city’s beginnings as a European seaport several centuries ago. In modern times Amsterdam enjoys fully legalized prostitution and the virtual legalization of over-the-counter marijuana sales and recreational drug use of all sorts.
But it’s important to remember that marijuana is not exactly legal in the Netherlands. Marijuana use and procurement exist in what the Dutch describe as a “gray area” where the marijuana smoker, sick or well, is allowed by governmental policy to enjoy possession of five grams of cannabis, purchased over the counter in coffeeshops—nearly 250 in Amsterdam alone—that may offer no more than 500 grams of assorted strains of marijuana and hashish on their premises at any one time.
Holland has also legalized medical marijuana, available at pharmacies with a doctor’s prescription and packaged in five-gram plastic containers with one’s prescription details imprinted on the side. Since the pharmacies don’t seem to stock any weed on the premises, there’s a three-day wait to get your prescription filled and patients have to fall back upon the coffeeshops to insure a steady supply of their medications.
But it’s illegal to cultivate, grow, harvest, import, transport or deliver cannabis to the outlets where it’s sold across the counter to anyone over 18 who can meet the modest price of purchase. An individual may grow five plants for personal use, but larger grow operations intended to supply the coffeeshops with saleable product are targeted for arrest and prosecution by the police and courts.
For centuries weed itself was scarce in Holland and hashish mixed with tobacco into joints (“jointjes”) was the traditional smoke. But in modern times the Dutch have learned from the holy farmers of Hawaii and the West Coast how to cultivate vast quantities of top-quality marijuana and make it available to the retail counters in the coffeeshops.
Now there are almost countless strains of marijuana—cannabis indica, cannabis sativa and blends of the two basic types—offered to the consumer by means of explicit menus provided at the point of purchase.
Standard brands like White Widow, Blueberry, Skunk and Power Plant are always in the house, along with more exotic strains like Super Silver Haze, Amnesia Haze, New York Diesel, various breeds of Kush and Cheese, and whatever hybrid delicacies the growers manage to dream up and cultivate from season to season.
Some coffeeshops—like the 420 Café, where this writer serves as Poet in Residence—offer limited menus with maybe six marijuana and six hashish selections. Others have strains especially grown for them or specialize in voluminous listings of 20 or 30 types of smoke always kept on hand. Some weigh out your grams and bag them before your eyes, while others sell pre-prepared gram bags. There is also a pleasing variety of pre-rolled joints available with or without tobacco.
Unlike our own measures in terms of ounces, quarters, eighths and sixteenths, the Dutch use the metric system and cannabis is sold strictly by the gram. For the causal smoker of limited financial power, this means that you can cop by the €8-€10 gram and rest assured that there’ll be another gram of the same sort and quality available in the same location when you need it next—no pressure to round up $60 or $80 or more in order to enjoy your smoke.
The great thing is that there’s no stigma attached to getting high or enjoying a smoke in a public setting, although the Dutch much prefer that such use is kept indoors and confined to like-minded sorts. Smoking cannabis is de rigeur in the coffeeshops, and there are many smoker-sympathetic bars that allow the simultaneous ingestion of cannabis and alcoholic spirits.
The “grey area” approach has been in effect now for almost 40 years, and while the national authorities have recently launched their own sort of war on the coffeeshop culture, Amsterdam and Holland still manage to maintain the most rational and least punitive environment for recreational marijuana use in the known world.
In this time of turmoil and massive change in America’s approach to marijuana use and distribution, we have an awful lot to learn from the Dutch system and how it accommodates the vipers amongst its populace.
For now Amsterdam remains Viper Central, and long may its freek flag wave
—Trans-Love Energies, Detroit
October 28-29, 2010 >
420 Café, Amsterdam
July 23, 2011 |
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