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FREE THE WEED 21
A Column by John Sinclair
Highest greetings from the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam, the 25th annual celebration of everything great about marijuana, hashish and the hemp plant itself, created by Steve Hager—this year’s inductee into the Cannabis Hall of Fame—and staged each year since 1988 by High Times magazine.
A lot of people were afraid that this would be the final year for the Cup in its home city due to the Dutch government’s incomprehensible efforts to enact what they called the “weed pass,” an intrusive and even transformative bit of government interference that would have required all Dutch coffeeshops to become private clubs and all Dutch weed smokers to register with the state as members of a particular club.
As a Michigan medical marijuana patient and a former inmate in the Michigan prison system, I’m used to this kind of treatment doled out as punishment for my choice of medicine and inspiration. But the Dutch citizenry isn’t used to this form of intrusion into their lives where weed is concerned. They’ve enjoyed about 40 years of peaceful smoking in the coffeeshops, in the parks and in the privacy of their own homes, while the international War On Drugs has raged on all around them, and their social freedom isn’t something they take lightly.
To try to make a long story short, the Dutch government that was trying to impose the weed pass law fell out of favor and was dissolved earlier this year following the implementation of the weed pass in the southern portion of the country where several small towns were being plagued by thousands of German, Belgium and other foreign nationals crossing the border to purchase some Dutch weed, creating massive traffic jams and pissing off a lot of people.
The weed pass law was activated in the south on May 1 to disastrous results: the Dutch smokers refused to register, the coffeeshops refused to turn into clubs and virtually closed down, the tourists continued to come and were serviced by a small army of street dealers, the national
government fell and nobody was happy except the kids with the drugs to sell in the streets.
The September elections brought a new coalition government into power, led by the right-center VVD Party (what Americans might call the Liberal Republicans) and the PvdA or Labour Party (Liberal Democrats to us), dropping the Christian Democrats and the anti-Islam PVV from the ruling sector. In the Dutch parliamentary form of government, there are always several political parties that hold seats in parliament, and the government in force is made up of a coalition assembled by the leading vote-winning party from other relatively popular parties it can get along with.
RNW News reports that the new cabinet still wants to ban non-residents from coffee shops but will only enforce this whim in co-operation with local councils, taking municipal policy into account. This means Amsterdam can take its own line: According to Mayor Eberhard Van der Laan, under the policies set out in the new coalition agreement tourists will be able to keep buying cannabis in the capital’s coffeeshops even if they’re not Dutch residents.
Van der Laan and the mayors of other large cities have always been opposed to the system, saying it would lead to a surge in street dealing. An estimated 7 million tourists visit Amsterdam every year and at least 1.5 million of them visit a coffeeshop during their stay. According to Mayor Van der Laan, “Those one and a half million people aren’t just going to just say, Ok, no weed. They’ll be swarming all over the city looking for drugs. More street crime, fights over fake drugs, no control over the quality of what’s being sold.”
This week—during the Cannabis Cup, ironically enough—the final shoe fell when Dutch Justice minister Ivo Opstelten, champion of the “weed pass,” announced that the controversial law that was due to take effect in the Netherlands at the beginning of 2013 is to be scrapped with immediate effect. In a letter to parliament he also said it would be up to municipalities to determine and enforce the regulations governing coffee shops in their area.
The new policy means that people will not have to register to buy cannabis. Officially customers will still have to show ID to prove they are Dutch citizens, but the
authorities in large cities such as Amsterdam are not expected to enforce this rule.
”I don’t see any difference,” says a man who wants to be identified only as Bob S. He has been selling cannabis at Amsterdam’s Yo-Yo coffee shop for 22 years and doubts authorities will be able to enforce the new policy. “It’s the same with the smoking ban in small cafes,” he says. “No one ever came here to check. So I’m not really worried.”
Thus a particularly ugly period in Dutch history has come to an end, and those of us who live here or come here to get high in peace are safe from harm once again.
Meanwhile, now that my birthplace of Flint, Michigan and my former home town of Detroit have finally legalized weed for their residents to smoke in relative peace, I’ve got a better world to look forward to when I come back to Michigan the next time. In Detroit where I visit my daughter & granddaughter, the citizens opted for legalized weed at the rate of 157,562 yes and only 85,640 no votes.
That’s a pretty substantial majority, and even though Detroit is not exactly the role model for Michigan cities to emulate, the demonstrated margins in favor of medical marijuana statewide (63% yes) and in favor of recreational use in Detroit, Flint, Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor (where weed has been decriminalized for 40 years!) should eventually sink in to the feeble minds of legislators and politicians who have made careers of opposing marijuana and cheering on the forces of law and order in their relentless persecution of the dope smoker.
How long can characters like Bill Shootey stand up under the pressure from the citizens to legalize? How long will these assholes be able to continue to suppress our medicine and our very culture through the Gestapo tactics of their police and prosecutorial forces? I think that’s up to the voters to decide, and I’m sticking with my fellow citizens as we begin finally to wake up and claim what is ours. Free The Weed!
—Amsterdam
November 20-23, 2012
© 2012 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved. |
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