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Tobacco Smokers Please Butt Out, but Weed Still OK in the Netherlands

By Hilary White
 
AMSTERDAM, July 2, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Lovers of cannabis and hashish will still be able to both purchase their drug of choice in Dutch "coffee bars" and smoke up, but tobacco smokers should beware that their habit is too politically incorrect for the Netherlands. The Dutch government has passed a law banning all tobacco smoke in cafés and restaurants.
 
In an interesting twist, smokers of cannabis have complained that the ban means they must take their dope "neat" and may no longer "cut" their drugs with tobacco to limit its effects.
 
Dutch coffee shop owners fear that the tobacco restriction will hit the trade as hard as the smoking ban in the UK has hit the traditional English pub. Since the ban on smoking was put in effect last year, it has been estimated that pubs in Britain are closing at a rate of 57 per month, up from 27 a month in 2007.
 
The Daily Telegraph quoted Mark Jacobsen, chairman of the BCD, a nationwide association of coffee shop owners, who said, "It's absurd. In other countries they look to see whether you have marijuana in your cigarette, here they'll look to see if you've got cigarette in your marijuana."
 
Besides being the only jurisdiction in Europe where cannabis use is effectively legalised, the Netherlands at the same time has one of the highest per capita government anti-drug budgets of the western world. Cannabis cultivation is officially illegal in the country.
 
In 1996, the Dutch government began to regulate cannabis cafes, of which there are about 720 in the country, on the theory that allowing "soft" drugs would prevent people moving on to "harder" substances like cocaine and heroin. Cannabis coffee shops are licensed and may not advertise their product or sell to anyone under 18. Sales and possession are limited to 5 grams a day per person.
 
It is unclear however, whether these restrictions are enforceable on the ground. Despite the fact that cannabis cultivation remains illegal in the Netherlands as well as in the rest of Europe, the source of coffee shop dope is rarely investigated. At the same time as anti-tobacco sentiment has grown in Parliament, the average concentration of THC in the cannabis sold in Dutch coffee shops has increased from 9 percent in 1998 to 18 percent in 2005.
 
The Dutch Ministry of Justice applies a policy of "gedoogbeleid," or of tolerance towards soft drugs, including issuing an official set of guidelines for public prosecutors telling them under which circumstances offenders should not be prosecuted.
 
The Netherland's laws allowing cannabis use in public, together with cheap air travel in Europe and the thriving legal "sex-trade", has made the country into a drug tourist Mecca.

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