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Americans in Amsterdam |
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Features
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Wednesday, 29 December 2004 13:59 |
 Criminals at home, but innocents abroad
Flying back to the United States from the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam, those of us who have had the opportunity to enjoy the easy availability and arrest-free use of marijuana and hashish can't help but wonder what it would be like to live permanently in this tolerant environment, to put down roots in a city so delightfully different from our own harsh, puritanical society. For the American pot smoker, the Amsterdam experience creates an unprecedented sense of liberation and personal freedom. The problems so long associated with recreational drug use in the United States simply melt away. Suddenly you're no longer a criminal, and you can relax and be yourself without fear of interference by the authorities.
"The first time I stepped into a coffeeshop I cried tears of joy," videographer Kenya Winchell confesses over a tasty hash joint at the 420 Café. "I've been a smoker for about 20 years, and pot will always be a part of my life. It was a powerful experience to see that you could really do it the way it's supposed to be done."
Personally, I've been a confirmed marijuana smoker for more than 40 years. I served three years in prison for possession of marijuana, and have consequently lived my entire adult life under threat of apprehension, prosecution, and further imprisonment-just because I like to get high. But in Amsterdam, nobody cares! I'm free to stop by a coffeeshop, cop some top-grade smoke right over the counter, sit down, roll up a joint, and smoke it to my heart's content.
So it makes perfect sense that an increasing number of my countrymen have determined to leave the War on Drugs (and Bush's America) behind and relocate to the lovely environs of Amsterdam, where they can enjoy their lifestyle of choice and pursue their individual fortunes free from the social stigma attached to recreational drug use here in the Homeland.
"Once I came to Amsterdam I never felt free living in America again," Winchell explains, echoing the general sentiment of the expatriates I spoke with for this story. In the States, Kenya was based in Los Angeles and produced a TV program, "Venice Connection," that grew into a concept called HempTV. She first came to Amsterdam in 1996 to shoot video at the Cannabis Cup and had a transformative experience.
"I moved here in 1997," she says, "and for two years I spent every day-morning, noon and night-in the coffeeshops. Eventually I started to meet people I could do projects with, and I've been busy ever since." One production was Cannabis Conspiracy, a DVD "rockumentary" on the coffeeshops of Amsterdam centered on The Greenhouse. "I decided to make Cannabis Conspiracy because coffeeshop culture is something I wanted to share with the rest of the world."
Winchell had another motivation as well. "My grandfather was Walter Winchell," she laughs, "who was an incredibly popular newspaper columnist and radio personality in the 1930s and '40s. He spent his whole career working for William Randolph Hearst, the media mogul who was the man behind the terrible anti-marijuana propaganda films like Reefer Madness and The Devil's Weed that helped create the initial anti-marijuana hysteria in America. So I'm trying to make up for all that by producing movies that tell the real story."
Not every American who comes to stay in Amsterdam has such an easy time finding a legitimate place in Dutch society But the local cannabis industry endures as a convenient point of entry for those lacking sufficient resources or legal standing to gain official status as registered immigrants. Many expatriates quickly gravitate to the marijuana underground and remain there, growing weed in rented apartments and marketing it to the coffeeshops or working "off the books" in other sectors of the cannabis economy.
Marijuana is not exactly legal in Holland, but the government has developed a system that exempts the user from arrest and allows the coffeeshops to operate under a set of strictly-enforced regulations. There are 280 coffeeshops in Amsterdam and 54 cannabis cafes that also serve alcoholic drinks, Each coffeeshop may stock a total of 500 grams of marijuana and hashish on the premises and sell up to five grams to each customer.
Though Dutch laws make no allowance for the legal production and distribution of marijuana, coffeeshops are clandestinely supplied by individual growers and growing organizations that sell their product by the kilo. The kilos are stored in safe houses, broken down there and transferred in small quantities to the stores. Growers who produce small crops in their homes for sale are generally safe from arrest and prosecution so long as they don't attract attention by means of noise, smell, or water, which all can lead to complaints by neighbors and subsequent police raids.
Apart from growing, there are opportunities in related areas of the marijuana service industry, including harvesting assistance, processing and packaging, storage and delivery, serving customers from behind the counter in the coffeeshops or even rolling joints for retail sale. Thus, industrious ex-pats find it possible, if they are cautious and discreet, to establish themselves as working links in the cannabis supply system and manage to make a living outside the official economy.
I had the pleasure of talking with several denizens of the expatriate underground, but it proved impossible to convince even one of them to speak for attribution. Lacking official status of any sort, they take great care to maintain their lives well below the radar of the local authorities and simply refused to be identified by name or even by occupation in order to avoid unwanted attention. But a few agreed to answer some of my queries about their experiences as Americans in Amsterdam.
"Why am I here?" one of my informants shrugged. "I didn't come by choice, I came by chance. Someone offered me a job here, and I came without really knowing anything about Amsterdam. Now I've been here for 10 years." Another respondent who currently works behind the hash counter in a local coffeeshop came to Amsterdam in 1996 and has previously been employed as a maintenance man and janitor, done IT work on mainframes and networks, and been a partner and co-owner of a bed & breakfast operation. "I didn't come here for this," he gestures dismissively toward the hash bar and its contents. "I got my job here by being a regular. I left America as a result of my disagreement with the domestic policies of the government and having absolutely no fucking future-no career, no pension, no Social Security, no medical care, nothing for the old age. I was attracted to Northern Europe, and Holland turned out to excel in terms of health, education, and social services, as well as convenient transportation and, of course, its relatively enlightened sense of social freedom," he chuckles. "Amsterdam is sort of a Disneyland for adults."
Not all of the Americans in Amsterdam are there to partake of the coffeeshop culture. TK estimates that there are 12,000 Americans working at permanent or temporary jobs in Holland, with somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 of them living in Amsterdam. Many are professionals who have been transferred to the Dutch outposts of the American firms they work for, or enterprising technicians and media workers who've found regular employment in the Netherlands. Others are artists and musicians, writers and poets, actors and dancers who have fled the oppressive cultural atmosphere of the homeland to make a new life in a society where their creative intelligence is better appreciated and their work is more likely to be rewarded. Some are legal residents, others are not, but all seem to thrive in this sympathetic cultural milieu that treasures its art and artists and helps subsidize their lives and works even into the 21st century.
From editors, artists and gallery owners to the underground growers and cannabis workers I talked with, everyone seemed to have found a spot for themselves in the Amsterdam of their dreams. Nobody was talking about going back to the States, and all were quick and generous with their advice about negotiating the ins and outs of expatriation. It was great to meet such a diverse bunch of fellow Americans so happily ensconced in foreign circumstances, and the truth is: I sure look forward to joining them soon.
- New Orleans, Mardi Gras, February 24, 2004
(c) 2004 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.3.1.650]]> |
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