Dutch coffee shops say cannabis smoke here to stay
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070420/od_nm/dutch_coffeeshop_odd_dc
Dutch coffee shops say cannabis smoke here to stay
By Sabine Fiedler Fri Apr 20, 8:42 AM ET
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Could a smoking ban spell the end of Amsterdam's
world famous coffee shops, where smoking cannabis is one of the main
attractions?
No chance, says local conservative politician and coffee shop owner
Michael Veling.
The Dutch may well follow other European countries in banning tobacco
smoking in restaurants, cafes and bars, but Veling says it should
still be possible to smoke dope.
"It is ridiculous to think that a smoking ban would be the end of
coffee shops," the 50-year-old Veling says.
He says the clientele who have been coming to coffee shops to buy and
inhale cannabis are flexible enough to find a way around any ban on
smoking the tobacco products they routinely mix with marijuana resin
or leaf in rolled paper "joints."
"You can bring parsley or old socks if you want, cut them here and
smoke them, nobody will say anything," Veling said.
"Plus there are plants that have a every similar structure to tobacco
and can maybe substitute for it."
A tobacco smoking ban, which could come into force at the start of
2008, may also boost the use of some of the weirder contraptions used
for inhaling the active part of marijuana, THC, which gives users a
high.
"Nearly all of our American customers do that anyway, using pipes or
the "volcano,"" Veling says in his dark, cozy coffee shop, pointing to
a shiny, cone-shaped silver contraption.
The volcano or vaporizer heats cannabis to release vapors of THC and
channels these into a long transparent balloon.
At the counter, a dark-haired man waits to get the air from the
balloon into his lungs. Using the volcano makes cannabis consumption
cheaper, Veling explains, because the drug can be used several times
and is not burned like in a pipe.
"On good days, when the shop is full of Americans, we sell 100 or 200
of these balloons," Veling says.
TOLERANCE
But most European customers of his "De Kuil" in central Amsterdam
prefer to roll their marijuana with tobacco into joints, Veling
admits.
One of them is Czech-born, Swiss resident Pavel Kotrba, sitting near
the entrance with a broad smile and dilated pupils.
If a ban came into force, he says: "I would smoke my joint on the
street in front of the coffee shop, no problem."
Soft drugs are legally banned in the Netherlands but under a policy of
"tolerance," buyers are allowed to have less than 5 g of cannabis in
their possession.
Government-regulated coffee shops sell cannabis and can keep stocks of
up to 500 g.
Coffee shops first sprung up in the Netherlands in the 70s and have
been drawing tourists ever since.
So far the majority of Dutch parliamentarians have urged that the
coffee shops be exempt from any smoking ban, but a more sweeping
Europe-wide ban might be introduced.
Unlike many of his colleagues in the soft drug retail business,
Veling, who is also speaker of the Dutch Cannabis Retailers
organization, does not consider the ban a danger to the industry which
he estimates rolls in more than 1 billion euros ($1.36 billion) a
year.
Most of the more than 700 coffee shops in the Netherlands would not
even be affected by it anyway, he says, as they resemble cannabis
drive-ins, where people queue in front of counters, buy and leave.
"Some of these shops are huge and generate sales of approximately five
million euros a year," he says.
Plus recent legislation banning the sale of both alcohol and cannabis
together in coffee shops doesn't seem to have irked his customers too
much.
"They smoke more, that's my impression."