[lbo-talk] Fwd: Dutch Ban on Smoking

[Thomas Seay]

Bad News.
> ===================
> 
> 
> Dutch Ban on Smoking Hits Pot Businesses
> Wed May 28, 5:41 PM ET
> 
> By ANTHONY DEUTSCH, Associated Press Writer
> 
> AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - The latest news from the
> mecca of marijuana
> users
> is a real mindblower. Under a new ban on smoking in
> public places,
> Dutch
> coffee shops would be allowed to continue selling
> joints, but
> customers
> would have to go outside to smoke them.
> 
> 
> To the chagrin of the owners of the country's
> popular marijuana
> smoking
> establishments, broad national health guidelines due
> to take effect
> next
> January seem to have inadvertently struck at the
> heart of the liberal
> Dutch drug policy.
> 
> 
> The law to ban smoking in public places is targeted
> at tobacco users,
> not
> marijuana smokers, and has met fierce resistance
> from eating and
> drinking
> establishments.
> 
> 
> Those businesses argued the tobacco smoking
> prohibition would result
> in
> the loss of 50,000 jobs and $1.5 billion in revenues
> annually. So the
> industry — as well as coffee shops which sell
> marijuana — has been
> granted
> a one-year extension until January 2005.
> 
> 
> Regardless, opponents say the ban will drive smoking
> customers at
> regular
> bars and cafes — about one in three of the Dutch
> smoke tobacco —
> across
> the borders to Germany and Belgium where it would
> still be allowed.
> 
> 
> The first coffee shop selling marijuana and hashish
> opened in the
> Netherlands in 1972 and they now number more than
> 800 countrywide.
> Growers
> and sellers compete in annual taste-testing
> competitions in Amsterdam,
> where millions of tourists a year sample the vast
> varieties advertised
> on
> menus.
> 
> 
> Besides selling small quantities of what the Dutch
> call "soft-drugs,"
> many
> coffee shops also offer patrons comfortable couches,
> fresh fruit
> juices
> and board games. Alcohol is generally forbidden.
> 
> 
> Reactions in Dutch coffee shops ranged from utter
> amazement to concern
> about what will happen to the three-decade-old
> tradition in Amsterdam
> of
> social pot smoking.
> 
> 
> "They've got to be out of their minds," laughed
> Annemiek van Royan, a
> regular at the "Kashmir (news - web sites) Lounge"
> coffee shop in West
> Amsterdam. Lighting up a joint of Dutch "skunk
> weed," she said she
> comes
> every day to hang out and talk with other visitors
> who can lean back
> on
> colorful embroidered cushions and puff away.
> 
> 
> "I bought a joint for now and a little more for
> later at home. The
> best
> part is coming here to relax. It makes my day," she
> said, asking the
> dealer jokingly if he was going to start selling
> hash cake.
> 
> 
> "Cake is so strong, it's too dangerous. People never
> know how much to
> eat," said Johan de Vries, the bartender at the
> Kashmir Lounge. He
> suggested building a heated outdoor terrace to get
> around the new law.
> 
> 
> Health Ministry spokesman Bas Kuik said the law was
> not intended to
> target
> coffee shops, and — as in all public areas — they
> could have
> designated
> smoking areas.
> 
> 
> The sale of marijuana is officially illegal, but its
> use has been
> decriminalized. Authorities allow the coffee shops
> to operate under
> strict
> guidelines as a way of exerting some control over
> behavior that they
> argue
> would happen anyway. Studies show that use of such
> drugs is no greater
> in
> the Netherlands than in countries where its is
> banned.
> 
> 
> Even the head of the anti-smoking lobby Clean Air
> Now, Willem van den
> Oetelaar, conceded that banning pot smoking in
> coffee shops had not
> been
> the intended purpose of the campaign to stop public
> smoking. But he
> still
> backed the move. "It's not our priority, but it is a
> good thing," he
> said.
> 
> 
> Van den Oetelaar said the organization's telephone
> hot line had
> received
> more than 2,000 complaints about smoking in public
> places since October
> —
> but not one complaint about a coffee shop.
> 

=====
<<Be like me!  The Primal Mother, eternally creative, eternally impelling into life,

    eternally drawing satisfaction from the ceaseless flux of phenomena.>>

    -Nietzsche, "The Birth of Tragedy"

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