Netherlands Bans Marijuana Sales to Tourist

Our election campaigns haven’t started yet. Completely opposite from America’s,
European elections are short, to-the-point, and publicly funded. We can only
hope the Dutch Labor Party (PvdA), the Socialists, D-66, and the Green Left parties
get a majority over the present poisonous concoction of VVD (Libertarians) and
CDA (Christians). Geert Wilders PVV party is a wild card. He’s the one who
pulled the plug on the present ruling coalition, and the VVD and the CDA are
very angry at him. Many of their members never wanted to work with Wilders in
the first place. Now it seems he’s been spending more time in the New York Jewish
community trying to promote his pathetic new book about how and why “the
Moslems” are out to get him. 

Since we just have a lame-duck government at present, we wish the weed
pass would be declared “contraversieël”, and further implementation
would be postponed until after the elections. I haven’t seen any impetus for
that in Parliament, sadly, and creepy old Minister Opstelten and his crowd of
Christian liars have been emboldened by a disastrous High Court ruling on April
27th that gives him everything he wanted, and sweeps every concern
for privacy off the table as well. Since there has been a lot of opposition to
Opstelten’s ruinous plans by mayors and city councils, and it wasn’t really
clear if he actually had absolute dictatorial powers over every coffeshop
everywhere, he had earlier agreed to allow each city to enforce his new
regulations in a way that suited them best, according to their individual
circumstances. This is the way things are traditionally done in the Netherlands.
But now that the judge has granted him absolute power, he’s bound and
determined to make it impossible to run a coffeeshop, and harder and harder for
anyone to buy marijuana legally.

Yes, Belgians are staying away from Maastricht in droves. The weed pass has
accomplished that, in any case. All but two coffeeshops remain closed, and
street dealers are having a field day in spite of all the extra undercover
police. Dozens have been arrested, and complaints about street dealing in
neighbor-hoods have been pouring in. Still, VVD mayor Onno Hoes declares the
weed pass a “success” and says that now little children can go
outside and play because “the streets are safe again”.  

Both Dutch and Belgian police are continually harassing anybody driving
across the border for any reason. Hundreds of cars are being stopped and
searched every day, and they’ve turned up a few grams of heroin, a gun, and a
few grams of weed, too. But that’s all. One Belgian businessman, who would
never smoke weed in his life was stopped, had his car searched, and was forced
to take his clothes off by the side of the road by the Dutch Marechausee, the
military police dispatched by Minister Opstelten. Indignant, he asked the
police why he’d been delayed, and they told him he had been following a
Moroccan drug-runner’s car. Really makes you wonder why they stopped him, but
not the Moroccan drug-runners! 

For the rest, the coffeeshops behind the iron “Weed Curtain”
here in the unfortunate south are mostly empty. The extra security guards
standing outside outnumber both the employees who haven’t been laid off yet,
and the one or two customers who have dared to register as members. The towns
in this area report that only a few hundred people have asked for an
“uittreksel” (proof of local residency) so they could join a local
coffeeshop, which has now become a “closed club”. The coffeeshops are bending
over backwards to comply with the rules, and they can only hope more people
will register in the future, . . . heavy smokers who will buy larger
quantities, that is. They don’t want people like me who don’t smoke very much.
My membership would be cancelled after a few months even if I did join. 
On May 10th, I took the train down to Eindhoven to check out the situation. I had
read that, at the moment at least, you could register at a coffeeshop in that
city without having to get an uittreksel; – all you needed to show was your
passport. It didn’t even matter if you lived in another town! I hadn’t visited
a coffeeshop in Eindhoven
for a long time, and I lost my way in the maze of curved streets in the city
center. I stopped and asked a mixed group of young guys (who looked like they
might know!) where I could find Coffeeshop Pink. Quickly, a black Antillian
jumped in: “Say mon, we can arrange some weed for you! It’s the same as in
the coffeeshop! You know you can’t get in there now. How much you want?”

I thanked him, but declined. From the looks of that guy, he could have
“arranged” a lot more than just weed for me. Out of curiosity, I was
tempted to ask him about some coke, but I decided it was better to drop that
idea.

I’ve traveled through Eindhoven MANY times over the years, visiting an
Indonesian lady I used to date, and lately, taking a bookkeeping course. But
never, never before, has anyone ever tried to sell me weed on the street there.
. . . . And yet, we’re supposed to believe the weed pass is a
“success”!

When I managed to find coffeeshop Pink, I was stopped at the door, as I
expected. I asked about membership, and the polite young man behind the bar
handed me a pile of papers and folders. I sat down and began to read all the
information, but then he came over and told me I’d have to leave. He apologized
profusely, but that’s just how paranoid they are these days of the special
police Opstelten has sent out to watch the coffeeshops, and try to find a
reason to shut them down. So I went and stood outside to read what kind of
hoops I’d have to jump through in order to buy a gram of weed under the new
rules.

It turns out that under a temporary deal worked out between the
coffeeshop owners and the Eindhoven
city council, the “uittreksel” is not required. Opstelten didn’t like
that, but agreed to allow it until the end of this year because no one was
registering, and street dealing was undeniably on the increase.

But on Jan. 1st, 2013, the weed pass is scheduled to choke off the whole
country, and such exceptions will no longer be granted.

I had been considering signing in somewhere in Eindhoven under these circumstances, since my
city of residence will not know I’m registered anywhere. As it stands now,
lists of coffeeshop members are not shared between municipalities, so my own
town won’t be screwing with my unemployment subsidy, my insurance premium, or
anything else they decide to do to identified marijuana smokers. Other
advantages are that Eindhoven
is only a 20-minute train ride from where I live, and coffeeshop Pink is
probably the best in the city. I filled out the forms, went back into the shop,
and although it’s against my principles, I signed in. The fine looking young man
and woman working the bar assured me they hated Opstelten’s new regulations
even more than I did, and they welcomed me with a package of rolling papers,
filter tips, a weed grinder, and a petition protesting the weed pass which I
signed with heart-felt enthusiasm. 

Strangely, in spite of all the shit that’s been going down, I’ve scored
some of the “allerbest” weed I’ve ever smoked here recently. The last time I visited
Toermalijn in Tilburg,
I bought a 70% sativa “Amnesia Haze” that lived up to it’s name
beyond all expectations! God knows I wish I would have stocked up and bought
more, considering that I’m now banned from entering Toermalijn ever again. This
makes me very sad. Toermalijn is not one of the cheaper places, but they have a
champagne-quality menu of exotic weed varieties, Nederhashes, and ice-o-lators
that makes my brain-receptors drool! It’s always been so pleasant to enjoy
their back-yard flower garden, and sit outside in warm weather with a glass of
chilled fruit juice next to their fishpond with it’s fountain. Why, why would
this idiotic right-wing government want to destroy such a nice thing? But this
is what conservatives are good for!

But Pink’s Haze is also killer, and their White Widow is an excellent
second. Their prices aren’t any worse than other shops, either. It’s a roomy,
clean, well-kept shop that I will enjoy visiting. 

So, I can still buy legally, and that’s all I want.

But that’s only until the end of this year. After that, I’ll be a
“criminal”. Unless our prayers are answered, and the weed pass is put on hold,
my membership with coffeeshop Pink will then be cancelled since I don’t live in
Eindhoven. I
don’t buy enough to qualify anyway, and they’re also going to start charging
membership fees. With a maximum of only 2000 possible customers, that’s the
only way the coffeeshops can keep going. Things are going to get increasingly
expensive, and that’s precisely what the government wants. 

At that point, I guess I’ll get an uittreksel and try to register with
The Grass Company coffeeshop in Den Bosch. But I’m sure they’ll chuck me too
for not buying enough, even if they haven’t reached their 2000-member limit
already. The prudes in the government think that, by restricting access to
legal purchase in any manner possible, people will stop smoking marijuana.

Most southern smokers, including the poor Belgians, Germans and French,
are heading north past the Weed Curtain. Coffeeshops in Nijmegen, for example, are reporting a 30%
increase in sales. There are a lot more cars with German license plates causing
traffic jams there now. Other than that, police don’t report any real problems.
These customers used to go to Venlo, further
south on the German border, but the shops in Venlo have closed since their clientele were
primarily Germans. I want to visit Nijmegen
again, too, while I still can. I remember a shop there that was also a fine
restaurant. 

Utrecht is busier than
usual, and before long, I’ll be traveling north to check out the fantastic new
designer-art coffeeshop Hi-Lo. This is the first coffeeshop to be allowed to
open in Utrecht
in the last 20 years, and it might very well be the last to ever open.

To the west, even Dordrecht and Rotterdam are doing more
business, prompting the Christians in those cities to call for an earlier
implementation of the weed pass in order to stop it all. 

Nothing has changed in Amsterdam,
either, so that remains an option for legal purchase.

Opstelten’s going to have a fight on his hands when he tries to fuck
with Amsterdam.
(And also with nearby Haarlem,
for that matter. Haarlem
hardly has any weed tourists to begin with.) Nobody in Amsterdam wants Opstelten’s weed pass; not
the mayor, and not even a single member of his own VVD party on the city
council. Still, the old shithead insists on shoving his stupid rules down Amsterdam’s throat on
Jan.1st, 2013 whether they like it or not. Mayor Eberhard van der
Laan wants to work out some kind of compromise, considering how much business
the city’s tourist industry stands to lose, but Opstelten won’t give a single
centimeter. I thought the Netherlands
was supposed to be a democracy. But not according to Opstelten and the
Christians. It’s hard to imagine a “free city” like Amsterdam with most of its
coffeeshops gone, and the handful that remain, open only to a small group of
high-paying Dutch citizens who have risked letting their names and addresses be
registered in a police dossier as “drug users” by becoming members of a
coffeeshop.

We’re all holding our tokes . . . . 

By the way, I’ll apologize to Opstelten for calling him a shithead as
soon as he apologizes to me for calling me an addict.