Posted on 02/29/2012 1:43:05 AM PST by Kaslin
Amsterdam’s Coffeeshops
By Rick Steves
While Amsterdam has long been famous for its nicotine-stained “brown cafés,” these days “coffeeshop” refers to a place where the Dutch gather to buy and smoke marijuana. While hard drugs are strictly illegal and there seems to be no interest in making them legal, marijuana is sold openly in coffeeshops throughout the Netherlands.
Wandering around Amsterdam, every few blocks you pass a window full of plants and displaying a red, yellow, and green Rastafarian flag — both indications that that coffee shop doesn’t sell much coffee. I ducked into the Grey Area Coffeeshop near Anne Frank’s House.
A round table at the front window was filled with a United Nations of tourists sharing travelers’ tales stirred by swizzlesticks of smoke. The table was a clutter of tea cups, maps, and guidebooks. From the looks of the ashtray, they’d been there a while.
Taking a seat at the bar next to a leathery forty-something biker and a Gen-X kid with two holes in his body for each one in mine; I felt more like a tourist than I had all day. The bartender, sporting a shaved head and a one-inch goatee, greeted me in English and passed me the menu.
I pointed to a clipped-on scrap of paper. “What’s ‘Aanbieding: Swarte Marok?’”
“Today’s special is Black Moroccan,” he said.
Swarte Marok, Blond Marok, White Widow, Northern Light, Stonehedge, Grasstasy... so many choices, and that’s just the wiet (marijuana). Hashish selections filled the bottom of the menu.
Above me dangled a tiny Starship Enterprise from a garland of spiky leaves. And behind the bartender stood a row of much-used and apparently never-cleaned bongs reminding me of the hubbly-bubblies that litter Egyptian teahouses. With a flick of my finger, I set the Enterprise rocking. The bartender said, “Access to the stars. That’s us.”
When I marveled how open-minded the Dutch are the bartender explained, “We’re not open-minded, just tolerant. There’s a difference. Wiet is not legal ... only tolerated.”
I asked, “Does this toleration cause a problem?”
Handing a two-foot-tall bong and a tiny baggie of leaves to a woman with a huge dog tied to the bike rack outside, he said, “My grandmother has a pipe rack. It has a sign: `A satisfied smoker creates no problems.’”
“That was tobacco, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s from the 1860s. But this still applies today.”
I asked the guy with all the holes why he smokes here.
Speaking through the silver stud in his tongue, he said, “Some young people hang out at coffeeshops because their parents don’t want them smoking pot at home. I smoke with my parents but come here for the coffee shop ambiance.”
The older guy in leather laughed. “Yeah, ambiance with a shaved head,” he said, as the bartender handed him his baggie-to-go.
Alone with the younger guy, I asked about the sign with a delivery boy on it.
“In Holland we have pot delivery services,” he explained, “like you have pizza delivery in America. Older people take out or have it delivered.”
A middle-aged woman hurried in and said, “Yellow Cab, please.”
She presented the bartender with a small, stickered card. “Buy twelve, get one free,” he explained to me, and handed her a baggie saying, “I cut you a fat bag.”
With a “Dank U wel, Peter,” she tossed it into her shopping tote and hurried out.
“This coffeeshop would never be possible in the United States,” I said.
A coffeeshop owner and a customer are happy to demonstrate their paraphernelia. Marijuana is not legal in Amsterdam — only tolerated.
“I know,” Peter, the bartender, agreed. He showed me snapshots of Woody Harrelson and Willy Nelson, each in this obscure little coffee shop, and continued. “America’s two most famous pot smokers told me all about America.”
The kid chimed in. “Hollanders — even those who don’t smoke — they believe soft drugs... you know, pot, hash... it shouldn’t be a crime.”
“What do your parents think?” I asked.
“They think the youth have a problem. My dad says, `Holland will get the bill later on.’”
“And other countries... doesn’t legal pot in Holland cause them a problem?” I asked.
“Actually, it’s not legal here,” he reminded me, “just tolerated. Officially, we can’t legalize anything because of all these world treaties.”
“The French complain about Holland’s popularity with drug users, but they have a worse problem with illegal drugs,” Peter added. “Here, the police know just what’s going on and where.”
“But what about hard drugs?”
“These are the problem. Europe comes to Holland for more than the pot. Most Dutch agree that these hard drugs should be illegal. We Dutch — I think because pot is tolerated — handle our drugs better than the kids who travel here to get high. But, like everywhere, we have a hard drug problem.”
Peter points to a chart on the wall that shows how to avoid bad XTC pills. “The police give us this chart. My English friends cannot believe they help in this way. They call our Politie the `polite-ies.’
“You don’t see the Dutch dying from heroin overdoses,” Peter continued. “But every time I read the newspaper it seems another German is found dead on the floor of a cheap Amsterdam hotel room.
“But pot,” he said, fingering a perfectly rolled joint, “this is not a problem.”
“American prisons are filled with pot offenders,” I said.
“Take your choice,” he said. “Allow for alternative ways of living or build more prisons. Here in Holland, pot is like cigarettes. We smoke it. We pay taxes. We don’t go to jail.”
For up-to-date specifics, see the latest edition of the Rick Steves’ Amsterdam, Bruges & Belgium guidebook. We also offer free-spirited tours of the Low Countries.
Source: ricksteves.com
Anyone who has been comments on what a cesspool it is.
You think you've met everyone who's been to Amsterdam?
Wow. Talk about a brilliant non sequitur.
The people I'm addressing follow it just fine. You may too, if you ponder the meaning of your word "anyone."
Baseless hysteria - we don't encounter alcohol addicts anywhere near that often.
“Baseless hysteria.”
No, it isn’t.
Is what has happened to our teenagers through promiscuity (encouraged by your buddies the 1960’s radicals) with higher STDs, higher pregnancy, higher abortion, higher suicide, baseless hysteria? No. It’s fact.
Is higher drug addiction in any area that enables recreational drug usage baseless hysteria? No. It’s fact.
Is the destruction to individual lives and to the lives of families that results when someone becomes addicted to drugs baseless hysteria? No. It’s fact.
What does any of that have to do with the prevalence of drug addicts slouched against the walls?
And how does drug addiction "enable" recreational drug usage?
Wrong as usual - 12-step meetings all across the country are full of people who have gotten the better of their addictions and quit.
People who go through 12-step programs (I’m sure you know many of them) will be the first to tell you after they have gotten off drugs that they are addicted for life. Just one usage will set the off and it is that first usage after recovery that they fear most, because they know it is the recommencing of their addiction.
What you say is neither contradictory to their "having gotten the better of their addictions" nor supportive of your claim that they are "owned for the rest of their lives."
The fact that you believe people who were addicted and got control of their drug/alcohol usage through a 12-step program are free of addiction and that their lives return to what they were before they began using drugs and alcohol
I never said either of those things - I correctly said they "have gotten the better of their addictions and quit," that is, they are no longer using and have a plan to remain nonusing so are not "owned."
What do you propose to do about the people enslaved by alcohol addictions? Do you support banning that addictive drug?
No response?
What do you propose to do about the people enslaved by alcohol addictions? Do you support banning that addictive drug?
No response?
Here’s my response, DH.
Are you familiar with the Russian cross? Why don’t you go and Google it?
Wait, I’ll save you the trouble, here’s a link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Cross
That wiki page explains very well what happens when a group of self-indulgent adolescents such as yourself give in to substance abuse of any kind.
Quite simply, Russia is dying, and excessive alcohol consumption is a large part of the reason.
And you want to replace alcohol with meth and crack and cocaine and heroin and LSD.
You are a pathetic, 1960’s-style radically self-indulgent troll. You need to move out of your mommy’s basement, stop smoking weed, and grow up. And you need to go back to DU, where you belong, troll.
Have you read the thread?
I’ve have posited a logical argument and he bombards me with emails and absurd threads that have no history or fact behind them, just his desire to legalize substances that have a history of destroying lives and families and societies.
And I’m the leftist? Read my posts going back for years. I’m as hardcore to the right as you can get.
I suppose in your world that being a patriotic American means handing the culture over to anarchists, perverts, drug-users, and flag-burners, because that’s freedom. And then, when the country falls completely to hell and the iron fist of the state takes over, you look around stunned asking what happened. Brilliant strategy you’re backing there. Look around at any hardcore socialist/communist state and you’ll find the culture of each and everyone of those nations was first destroyed, creating a cultural vacuum that enabled the leftists to move in and take over.
Maybe you ought to put the crack pipe down yourself.
Go and Google “non sequitur” and you’ll find that you were being fallacious.
I have never met anyone who went to Amsterdam and came back and said, “America should do exactly what Amsterdam has done because that place is so much better than America” or anything even remotely similar to that.
I have met I think two people who liked Amsterdam. They were both in their early 20’s, very much burn-outs, with no jobs, were not looking for jobs, and spent a lot of time playing video games. Of course, what they are saying is that they like cesspools.
There is the crowd you are addressing.
“What does any of that have to do with the prevalence of drug addicts slouched against the walls?
And how does drug addiction “enable” recreational drug usage?”
Are you kidding me?
Do you really have so much difficulty with basic reading comprehension? How could you so completely switch my premise and conclusion? Were you joking?
Legalizing drugs increases the prevalence of drugs.
Legalizing drugs culturally condones recreational drug usage.
The increased prevalence and cultural condoning of recreational drug usage increases recreational drug usage in a society.
Increased recreational drug usage in a society increases the percentage of citizens who become addicted to drugs.
If you have trouble following that logic, which is the logic I’ve been using to lead you out of your darkness, then there’s no way you can intelligently engage in this conversation. If you are a drug user, you are defeating your own argument that legalizing drugs is no big deal.
Quite simply, Russia is dying, and excessive alcohol consumption is a large part of the reason.
That doesn't answer the question: Do you support banning the addictive drug alcohol? (Free clue: it's a yes or no question.)
For the record, Ghost first FReepmailed me - and is now apparently miffed that I won't let him have both the first and the last word in that exchange.
Anyone who has been comments on what a cesspool it is.
You think you've met everyone who's been to Amsterdam?
Wow. Talk about a brilliant non sequitur.
The people I'm addressing follow it just fine. You may too, if you ponder the meaning of your word "anyone."
I have never met anyone who went to Amsterdam and came back and said, “America should do exactly what Amsterdam has done because that place is so much better than America” or anything even remotely similar to that.
Now you're catching on - you're not in a position to say what "anyone who has been" says, but only "anyone you have met." We'll really have gotten somewhere when you realize that the latter group cannot be assumed to be a representative sample of the former group.
Baseless hysteria - we don't encounter alcohol addicts anywhere near that often.
“Baseless hysteria.”
No, it isn’t.
Is what has happened to our teenagers through promiscuity (encouraged by your buddies the 1960’s radicals) with higher STDs, higher pregnancy, higher abortion, higher suicide, baseless hysteria? No. It’s fact.
Is higher drug addiction in any area that enables recreational drug usage baseless hysteria? No. It’s fact.
Is the destruction to individual lives and to the lives of families that results when someone becomes addicted to drugs baseless hysteria? No. It’s fact.
What does any of that have to do with the prevalence of drug addicts slouched against the walls?
And how does drug addiction "enable" recreational drug usage?
How could you so completely switch my premise and conclusion?
I parsed your sentence in a manner other than you intended - that is, I parsed it as "higher drug addiction in any area" being the subject, "enables" the verb, and "recreational drug usage" as the object. Thanks for the clarification.
Legalizing drugs increases the prevalence of drugs.
Legalizing drugs culturally condones recreational drug usage.
Dubious - many legal acts are not culturally condoned, for example, insulting your wife.
The increased prevalence and cultural condoning of recreational drug usage increases recreational drug usage in a society.
Perhaps - but for most drugs, not by much, since the disincentives inherent in the drugs themselves outweigh the removed disincentives of possible arrest.
Increased recreational drug usage in a society increases the percentage of citizens who become addicted to drugs.
Utterly unclear, since legalization also lessens incentives to use drugs in ways that encourage addiction, for example, getting as high as possible during any given episode of use.
Your replies, your attempt to counter-argue, have just become silly.
“Baseless hysteria”
Really? My predictions of what will happen are based upon historical fact, which you try to refute by saying, “Well, no, maybe...”
Let’s talk about your baseless optimism that legalizing drugs will simply make everyone’s life better, richer, freer, more prosperous. “Hoping” (like a supporter of Obammie the Commie) that everything will be better in the future if we just legalize a poison is...
Baseless optimism.
“Dubious - many legal acts are not culturally condoned, for example, insulting your wife.”
You’re kidding, right? You don’t really intend for that to pass as some sort of logical rebuttal, do you?
Do you not see how weak your argument on that point is?
Honor killings are legal in Islasmofascist states. They occur fairly frequently, considering how horrible they are. And the last I checked, insulting spouses was the backbone of prime time TV.
How can you be so illogical?
The increased prevalence and cultural condoning of recreational drug usage increases recreational drug usage in a society.
Perhaps - but for most drugs, not by much, since the disincentives inherent in the drugs themselves outweigh the removed disincentives of possible arrest.
*********
Then tell me which society legalized drugs and saw a precipitous decline in drug usage and drug addiction.
Do you not see how illogical you are being?
You've cited no historicAL facts.
Let’s talk about your baseless optimism that legalizing drugs will simply make everyone’s life better, richer, freer, more prosperous.
Legalizing will by definition lessen the harms caused or aggravated by criminalization.
Honor killings are legal in Islasmofascist states. They occur fairly frequently, considering how horrible they are.
Irrelevant - we're discussing legalizing drugs in this country, not in Islasmofascist states.
And the last I checked, insulting spouses was the backbone of prime time TV.
Hardly the backbone - and what's enjoyed as lowbrow entertainment is not necessarily condoned in real life. Try going around putting pies in people's faces and see how condoned it is.
Perhaps - but for most drugs, not by much, since the disincentives inherent in the drugs themselves outweigh the removed disincentives of possible arrest.
Then tell me which society legalized drugs and saw a precipitous decline in drug usage and drug addiction.
So in your book "increased not by much" is "a precipitous decline"?
Look, I’m going to leave off on this useless exchange.
As I’ve said, I’ve proved my point that you do not have a right to do that which harms others and that leads to societal decay.
It is obvious at this point that I was correct, that you are just a liberal, and one of those liberals that is entirely self-indulgent, and that you are a troll on this board whose goal it is to try to convince conservatives that true conservatives condone the complete elimination of all codes of morality that voluntarily restrict harmful behavior.
On another thread, you mentioned wearing the crucifix and quoted the Bible, so I’m going to leave you with this thought.
If you truly are a Christian, then you know that you will be held to account for all that you have done with your opportunities in this life, and you will be judged for those that you have led astray, for those whose lives you deterred from God, including your own. I’m not saying you will not be saved. I believe that if you are a Christian, you will be saved. But you will stand naked before God and you will be judged guilty for the worldly and self-indulgent choices you made that deterred yourself and others from God. And that may not sound so bad at first knowing that your punishment was served by Jesus. But think about what that moment will be like when you stand guilty before the God who so loved you that he sacrificed His only begotten son that you should not perish but have life everlasting. Think of the anguish you will suffer when you are found guilty of such ingratitude.
The Christians I know know not to tempt the devil, to play with darkness, to toy with sin. We know that if we pitch our tent toward Sodom, we will be overcome by evil. And we know that if we tempt others to pitch their tents before Sodom, that we will no less be overcome by evil.
And, finally, let me say this, that if iron is not protected, eventually rust will destroy it. It does not mean that rust is superior or that rust is true and right. It means that the iron was not sufficiently guarded.
It takes a team of highly skilled, intelligent, dedicated people to build a beautiful, sound Victorian home that can last for centuries. It only takes one thoughtless, selfish fool with a match to destroy it.
It's been very useful in showing that you have no sound, coherent argument for drug criminalization.
As I’ve said, I’ve proved my point that you do not have a right to do that which harms others and that leads to societal decay.
What you've failed to do is show that drug relegalization either harms others or leads to societal decay.
It is obvious at this point that I was correct, that you are just a liberal, and one of those liberals that is entirely self-indulgent,
Since I don't use even currently legal recreational drugs (alcohol, tobacco), it's hard to make out how I'm "self-indulgent."
the complete elimination of all codes of morality that voluntarily restrict harmful behavior.
Completely wrong - I want the complete elimination of all codes of LAW that INvoluntarily restrict behavior that is at worst only SELF-harmful. I'm all in favor of the voluntarily restrictions of codes of morality.
The Christians I know know not to tempt the devil, to play with darkness, to toy with sin.
Saying that the prevention of sin is not the proper nor effective province of government is not "to toy with sin."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.