Pot Shots: Holland Goes Off the Deep End

The smoking ban coming to the Netherlands on July 1 will spell the end for some cannabis cafés, which is just how the Christian-conservative Balkenende administration likes it.

But the unintended consequences of the ban, well... I just had a non-pot-induced fit of the giggles about it.

You see, in its wisdom, the government has decided that even though people, of their own volition, go to these establishment for the express purpose of smoking, the potential damage that tobacco does to patrons' and employees' lungs can no longer be tolerated.

But here's the twist: a joint that contains both tobacco and pot will be illegal. Smoking pure hashish or weed, however, will continue to be just fine — light up! (This nicely calls these silly British experts' bluff.)

The Dutch scheme is entertaining in at least three different ways.

1. It seems to accidentally promote the use of quasi-illicit drugs over a less controversial, "milder" one. As the proprietor of one Dutch smoke shop says, in some disbelief:

"[It] sounds a bit to me like going into a cafe and being able to buy a beer without being able to drink it there. But the cafe still lets you drink whiskey, rum and vodka."

2. While the government contentedly thinks it is clamping down on "drug culture" and tobacco all at once, and supposedly coming into compliance with the rest of Europe, a spokesman for the association of Dutch coffee shop owners rightly muses about law enforcement officers charging in and checking smokables for the presence of...the 'wrong' kind of dried plant leaves.

"In every other country they do just the opposite — there they check whether [instead of tobacco] there is cannabis [in the joint]."

He laughs when he says this, as well he should.

3. It will continue to be legal to smoke tobacco outside, which I suppose is as it should be. But who benefits when the people who like their pot mixed with tobacco — the vast majority of European marijuana smokers, I'd wager — are driven out into the open? The net effect of the ban will be that pot aficionados may no longer puff their doobies in the comfort of a discreet smoking lounge, away from the disapproving glances of the uptight citizens' brigade; they will instead indulge their habit on the street, most likely in front of the shop. Won't somebody please think of the children!

The monumental cluelessness of the current Dutch drug policy is exasperating on one level. Then again, the lack of brain power in the Hague has also staved off, for now, more draconian attempts to force adults not to smoke a relatively benign plant that puts them in a calm and contemplative mood.

Clearly, the war on drugs has come to Holland; the Dutch mandarins just haven't quite gotten the hang of it yet.

[thanks, Nicky!]

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P.S. Despite the presumed lure of an indolent Beavis and Butthead lifestyle, the Dutch soccer players on the national team — who I imagine have, at one point, all used alcohol and/or pot — are slaying their current Euro-Cup opponents left and right, with a beautiful attacking style reminiscent of the  Cruyff / Neeskens era. I'm just sayin'.

Comments

[Phelps]

Caught the game Friday when I had lunch at Cafe Rembrandt here in Dallas. They were indeed amazing. (I didn't know that there was a game on until I wandered in and saw a gaggle of orange shirts huddled around teh big screen.)

[Martin Owens]

Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. I begin to fear for the West in earnest.