I will be staying in Haarlem that week anyway, what fun this will be.

The First Yearly “Amsterdam 420 Smoke-Out!” April 20th, 2012



420 Smokeout Amsterdam

420 Smokeout Amsterdam Musical Support

420 Smokeout Amsterdam Flash Mob

Dutch Court Upholds Ban On Foreigners Buying Marijuana

By Steve Elliott
Friday, April 27, 2012


A Dutch court on Friday upheld a new law banning foreigners from buying marijuana in coffee shops in the Netherlands, possibly ending decades of "weed tourism" for which Amsterdam and other cities have become world-famous.

A Dutch judge in the Hague ruled that the new law is legal. The move to ban foreigners from buying cannabis is being fought in the city of Amsterdam, where the coffee shops are a major tourist draw and where many shops owners have vowed to ignore the law once it comes into effect.

The conservative government of the Netherlands seems hellbent on turning back the clock to a darker time in Dutch history -- a time when the cannabis trade was underground and people had to depend on the black market for marijuana. According to expert observers, the ripples could reverberate internationally.

"If tolerance ends or gets limited in the Netherlands, then politicians all over the world will say things like 'Tolerance failed in Holland,' and use that as an excuse to enforce their anti-cannabis propaganda, opinions and laws," well-known Dutch cannabis blogger Peter Lunk told Toke of the Town.

A group of the coffee shops had mounted a challenge to the government ban, launched after city officials in the southern Netherlands had claimed "increased levels of drug-related crime," reports Antony Faiola at the Washington Post. The decision, taken by the conservative government in power, means that coffee shops in the south must stop selling cannabis to foreigners to May 1.

The coffee shops will be allowed to introduce a "weed pass" for Dutch citizens, who will be legally permitted to keep buying marijuana. The plan will expand to other Dutch cities -- including popular cannabis destination Amsterdam -- by January 1, 2013, according to authorities.

The Netherlands is continuing to move toward tighter controls on the sale of marijuana -- for which it has had a "tolerance" policy for years -- even as other countries, including the United States, seem increasingly friendly to the legalization of cannabis.

Lawyers for the Netherlands' roughly 600 cannabis cafes argued that excluding foreigners from the shops while allowing Dutch citizens to buy marijuana was illegal under national anti-discrimination laws. They vowed on Friday to appeal the case.

"This is a bad decision not only for the foreigners who can be discriminated against now, but also for the image of the Netherlands in other countries," said Maurice Veldman, attorney for a group of coffee shops that challenged the ban. "We are not a free country anymore because our government asks us to discriminate."

Michael Veling, 56, owner of the 420 Cafe in Amsterdam's red light district, said he was outraged by the court's decision. Veling, also chairman of the Dutch Union of Cannabis Retailers, said coffee shop owners in the city Maastricht, where the law comes into effect next week, were preparing to ignore "this ridiculous law" and were "ready to be arrested."

"We have tourists that just want to have a smoke," Veling said. "If they're not going to get it, they will ask Dutch people who actually have a pass for the coffee shop to buy it. Or they fall in the hands of the illegal street sellers.

tokeofthetown

Protestors just say no to Dutch cannabis ban

By Svebor Kranjc and Thomas Escritt

MAASTRICHT/TILBURG, The Netherlands | Tue May 1, 2012 10:11pm IST

MAASTRICHT/TILBURG, The Netherlands (Reuters) - Tourists puffed on spliffs in the streets of southern Dutch cities and defiant coffee-shops sold joints to visitors in protest against a ban on selling cannabis to foreigners which took effect on Tuesday.

In Maastricht, a short drive from both the German and the Belgian borders, protesters waved banners decorated with marijuana leaves and slogans such as "Dealers Wanted" and "Stop discrimination for Belgium".

In the main square, a few hundred demonstrators staged a sit-in and about 50 openly smoked joints alongside a two-metre-(6 ft)-long fake spliff.

The new law rolls back the Netherlands' traditionally relaxed attitude to narcotics and clamps down on the millions of foreign "drugs tourists" who flock each year to coffee shops, famed for dispensing soft drugs.

From Tuesday, the cafes in three southern provinces close to the German and Belgian borders can only sell cannabis to registered members. Authorities say the move will reduce crime.

"Now we can't enter any more, outrageous, it's discrimination," a Belgian smoker, who gave his name as Cannabas, told Reuters.

Maastricht's mayor, Onno Hoes, was presented with a petition signed by about 300 coffee shops and other outlets asking for the ban to be scrapped.

The city's Easy Going coffee shop closed its doors to all customers in protest, saying police would simply have to handle dealing on the street instead.

Marc Josemans, head of Maastricht's coffee shop association, said in recent weeks dealers from northern France, Belgium and eastern Europe had started plying their trade in the streets.

"Now this is totally new for Maastricht, we never had this problem, so actually we are creating more problems then we are solving," he said.

The new law, passed by the Liberal-Christian Democrat coalition before it collapsed last month, was introduced in January and will be enforced in the southern provinces before being introduced nationwide next year.

Coffee shops will only be allowed to admit a maximum of 2,000 registered members, who must have a local address.

Politicians said the measure was needed to stamp out crime related to the drug trade and to limit cannabis consumption.

Opponents of the law say it will drive cannabis use underground and that the membership lists raise civil liberties concerns.

DON'T BOGART THAT JOINT

In Tilburg, some coffee shops sold ready-rolled joints and sachets of weed to foreigners in open defiance of the new law.

Willem Vugs, proprietor of the 't Oermelijn coffee shop in Tilburg, told Reuters it was business as usual.

"We've been selling cannabis to anybody who comes, as normal," said Vugs, one of several coffee shop owners who wants to be brought before court so the ban can be tested.

"We are being forced to discriminate against foreigners."

He said his shop welcomed up to 800 visitors a day, around a fifth from Belgium, which is less than half an hour away by car.

"They don't just spend their money here, they buy groceries and fill up their cars, too," he said, arguing that for Tilburg, the loss of custom could be economically painful.

The Netherlands for years tolerated the sale of up to 5 grams per person per day of marijuana and hashish in the controlled environment of the coffee shops. It also permits home cultivation of up to five marijuana plants per person.

But the prospect of a register has many worried.

"My customers don't want a membership list. For one thing, smoking cannabis is technically illegal and for another, people worry that police will have access to the list," Vugs said.

Other coffee shop owners say local customers including doctors, nurses, lawyers and other professionals do not want to be on record as consumers of soft drugs.

Maastricht Mayor Hoes said such concerns were unwarranted and the information would not be used for anything other than checking the coffee shops.

Editing by Sara Webb and Angus MacSwan)

reuters

Some related pictures from coffeeshopdirect

More Protest Pictures - Coffeeshop Nieuws

Good stuff.

Dutch "Weed Pass" Plan Hitting Bumps

by Phillip Smith,
May 08, 2012

One week after being rolled out in southern border cannabis cafes, the conservative Dutch government's effort to restrict foreigners from the coffee shops by making them members-only and requiring a "weed pass" for entry is off to a rocky start.

The plan was met last week with street protests and civil disobedience in Maastricht, and this week, numerous coffee shops remain closed there in protest. Meanwhile, the largely Belgian and German "drug tourists" at whom the ban is aimed have responded by simply driving further into Holland to buy their weed since the ban is only in place on the border.

Even Dutch police seem less than enthused. Police in Eindhoven said they were still undergoing training on how to check for weed passes, while police in other border towns, such as Den Bosch, Oss, and Uden told Agence France-Presse "cannabis controls are not a priority."

"It takes time to put everything in place," conceded Justice and Safety Ministry spokeswoman Charlotte Menten.

Police in Maastricht, the largest city now living under the weed pass regime, have taken a tougher line, shutting down Marc Josemann's Easy Going cannabis café after he flouted the law by selling to foreigners, but at least 14 more cannabis cafes there have also shut down to protest the law as discriminatory and bad for business.

Before flouting the law by selling to foreigners, Josemann's first obeyed the law, refusing to sell to some foreigners, who then, in accordance with his wishes, filed a discrimination against him with local authorities. That complaint became the basis of Josemann's ongoing legal challenge to the law.

"Now, we're going to court," Josemanns told AFP. "We were only waiting for one thing: the municipality to close us down."

Villem Vugs, head of the coffee shop association in Tilburg said that problems blamed on drug tourism—traffic jams, rowdiness, street dealing—were largely a Maastricht problem. "The government wants to implement a nationwide solution to address a local problem in Maastricht," he complained. There is "little or no nuisance" from the trade in his city, he added.

The weed pass plan is supposed to go into effect nationwide next year, affecting all 670 cannabis coffee shops in the county, but right now, it only affects 80 cafes in the south. There, the cannabis cafes are only supposed to sell to Dutch residents who have signed up for the weed pass.

Now, the foreign drug tourists are showing up further in the Dutch interior, in cities such as Nijmengen, about 90 miles from Maastricht.

"In recent days, we are spotting cars with Belgian plates in the city center, who are clearly there for the coffee shops," Nijmegen police spokeswoman Florian Vingerhoeds told AFP. "Before, we never saw Belgian plates."


stopthedrugwar

'Dutch drugs policy is being sacrificed to populism'

by Gordon Darroch
Monday, 21 May 2012


The chairman of Maastricht’s coffeeshops association says the wietpas will dismantle 35 years of progress in tackling drugs policy in the Netherlands.

“I'm concerned that the real purpose of these rules is to strangle the life out of coffeeshops. Whether that happens in practice remains to be seen,” Marc Josemans told The Amsterdam Herald.

His Easy Going coffeeshop was closed by the city council last Friday for breaching the new rules. Josemans is going to court on June 5 to challenge the council’s authority to enforce them.

The new law has turned coffeeshops into private clubs whose members must have a permanent address in the Netherlands. Visitors are banned from the cafes as the government tries to cut down on the problem of drug tourism.

If the wietpas law prevails, Josemans fears it will spell the end of Dutch efforts to build an alternative to the ‘war on drugs’ strategy.

“It's very sad to see the way the Netherlands is going backwards in terms of setting an example to other countries,” says Josemans.

“Since 1976 we've had a policy of separating soft drugs and hard drugs so that the consumption of soft drugs is decriminalised and people haven't had to buy from street dealers.

“Now everybody who lives outside the Netherlands, including Dutch expats, has to buy their weed illegally on the street. What the minister is doing goes right against the rules. That's what we want the judge to clarify.

“It's also counter-productive symbolic politics, it won't have the desired effect.”


Populist tide

Josemans argues that the increasingly populist tone of political debate has turned people against the coffeeshop culture. “What we are seeing is the consequences of populism,” he says. “Geert Wilders has perfectly copied the moralising style of Pim Fortuyn.

“The Liberal party (VVD) used to be very tolerant, but they lost a lot of voters to the populists and wanted them back. That's why they have adopted this moralistic and religious attitude.

“They say drugs are bad for you, so they should be forbidden. A realistic policy would say drugs are bad for you, so we should create as many regulations as we can to reduce and control the dangers.

“For years we've had hardly any drugs deaths in the Netherlands, consumption is lower than the average and there's little experimentation among our young people.

“Countries like Belgium, France and Germany are becoming more and more tolerant towards drugs. In Spain they have cannabis clubs. We are the only country that is going in the opposite direction and joining the 'war on drugs', which we know creates far more victims than using cannabis.”


'Shifting the problem elsewhere'

In Maastricht the effects are already being felt. Josemans says hotel and restaurant bookings are down and local residents are complaining about an increase in drug dealing on the streets.

In the first two weeks since the wietpas regulations came in, 50 street dealers have been stopped by the police, a higher number than usual.

The city council the problem of street dealing has simply become more visible because the coffeeshops are closed. It also says the number of foreign visitors has visibly decreased since May 1.

Out of the 1.8 million people who visit the 14 coffeeshops in the Limburg capital, 1.7 million come from over the border, says Josemans. Starved of that custom, most, if not all, of them will simply go out of business.

He has claimed that three-quarters of Maastricht’s 440 coffeeshop staff will lose their jobs as a result of the new rules and the wider tourist trade, including hotels and restaurants, will be hit hard.

“All the council has done is shift the problem to places like Nijmegen, Arnhem and Cuijk,” says Josemans. “If the whole of the Netherlands turns the tourists away on January 1 there are going to be real problems.”


Legalising cannabis

Josemans says the solution is to go in the opposite direction from the present government policy and create a legitimate drug supply chain, taking the means of production out of the hands of criminal gangs.

He is a member of the Taskforce Handhaving Cannabis (Task Force for the Regulation of Cannabis/THC), which produced a report last year detailing how a legal supply line would work.

Cannabis producers would be allowed to set up clubs, which would be registered with the chamber of commerce and have special dispensation to supply coffeeshops.

Legalisation would also allow the government to raise taxes on soft drugs, which the THC report estimates would be worth €850 million to the state coffers. Josemans believes this could be a clinching argument at a time of economic recession.

“Nearly half our politicians are against this policy,” he says. “If we take a turn to the left on September 12 things can change very quickly and we can influence left-wing parties across Europe.

“If one country can take the lead and show that it works, the others are sure to follow, especially during an economic crisis. Look at how much tax and duty is paid on tobacco and alcohol.

“Nobody is taking responsibility. Even the foreign governments are hypocritical about this. They're unhappy about what we're doing, but they don't want to take responsibility in their own countries.

“Our government says they should open their own coffeeshops. I agree with them on that.”

Despite the unfavourable political climate of the last few years, Josemans remains optimistic that the Netherlands can lead the way in international drugs policy. He cites a Dutch saying: “Once you get one sheep over the dam, the rest will follow by themselves.”

Amsterdam Herald

On Sunday 17 June, the VOC for the fourth time, Cannabis Liberation Day!

4th Cannabis Liberation Day in Amsterdam
A FREE cannabis culture festival in Amsterdam Westerpark.

Central slogan this year: gives you grams!

Free flyers to order? Mail to info@voc-nederland.org

Last year, experienced some four thousand visitors a memorable, sunny day in the Westerpark, a vibrant celebration of the international cannabis culture. Since the de facto banning of the Highlife Fair is the largest cannabis Cannabis Liberation Day event in the Netherlands.

Besides a stage entertainment with bands, DJs and speakers from home and abroad there is a hemp market, theater and a Cannabis Festival in the biggest Ger in Europe.

The poster adorned including Def P & The Beat Busters, the British band Latin Quarter, DJ Isis and King Shiloh Soundsystem. Biological weed grower Doede de Jong, nationally known by the NCRV Nederwiet documentary, will speak, as Dimitri Breeuwer of Consumer WeSmoke and Jo Smeets of the Netherlands Foundation Advocacy Staff Coffeeshop. The presentation is again in the hands of DC Lama. VOC spokesman Derrick Bergman: "In this election year, we want a massive positive signal towards politics and the general public.

For hundreds of thousands of Dutch cannabis is an enrichment of their lives or a drug that provides relief without side effects. Really problematic use is limited to a very small group, but which completely dominates the debate. " On 17 June the new tolerance criteria for coffee shops in Southern Netherlands about six weeks maintained. The sad consequences of the introduction of the wietpas and the "private club" are already visible: empty coffee shops, explosive growth of the illicit market, economic loss and insecurity. Bergman: "The new criteria are unnecessary, undesirable and unworkable. The wietpas as quickly as possible from the table: it is a failed experiment of a failed government. The next government should not focus on the front of the coffee shops, but on the back: the supply and cultivation. "

The VOC will all visitors Cannabis Liberation calls cannabis friendly to vote on 12 September. Early September is a special election edition of the Cannabis Tribunal in the program.

Cannabis Liberation Day 2012
Westerpark Amsterdam Sunday, June 17, 2012

Admission free

Contact & information: Central-mail address: info@voc-nederland.org Spokesman: 040-2572818 (Derrick Bergman) 00-32-495122644 (Joep Oomen) Websites: www.voc-nederland.org & www.cannabisbevrijdingsdag.nl

coffeeshopnieuws

Translation by Google

Lighting Up the Weed Pass

By Nathan Thornburgh
Jun 5,2012


From the video

The phrase “weed pass” sounds a lot like the most awesome high school hall pass ever. But in Amsterdam, which has long functioned as Europe’s version of that place underneath the football bleachers where everyone goes to get high during recess, “weed pass” means something completely different.

It’s not about legalizing weed; it’s about restricting it. Already voted into law in Holland, the Weed Pass is essentially an initiative to prevent foreign visitors from engaging in what Dutch conservatives call Drug Tourism. The idea: turn the famous coffee shops into private clubs so that only Dutch residents would be able to visit in Amsterdam and elsewhere. Foreigners, those rolling cliques of American college kids, Australian backpackers and Turkish spacecakers, would have to take their giggle party elsewhere. The law is already nominally in effect since May first, in southern Holland, near the border regions where Germans and Belgians would come buy weed for resale.

I recently visited the 420 Café in Amsterdam—for research purposes of course—and found owner Michael Veling, who is also the spokesman of the union of Amsterdam coffee shops.

The backdrop to all this is that weed is not actually legal in Amsterdam. Coffee shops had proliferated until 15 years ago, they introduced a sort of licensing arrangement, where existing Cafe’s were tolerated and regulated, w increasingly tight restrictions, such as not being able to serve beer, or to mention marijuana in any advertising, in exchange for continued tolerance. Now that tolerance is ending with these new laws, which first took effect in the south of Holland.

“They were introduced [in early May] in the three southerly provinces,” says Veling. “I went down there [to] see it all happening. The funny thing is that although the police have come to the coffeeshops to check if they have foreigners inside or whatever, they haven’t booked anyone yet, they haven’t arrested anyone, they haven’t made a citation… so I think that the DA’s office in this country has cold feet. Where is the arrests? We need an arrest so we can prosecute the legality of discriminating against non-residents.”

Owners are itching for a fight, because they know they will win. At the end of the day, Dutch tourism cannot survive on Van Gogh and tulips alone. And as marijuana laws become laxer around the word, weed is better, cheaper and more readily available from Catalunya to California. Amsterdam’s advantage is still its laid-back, drop-in, fire-up and tune-out coffee shop culture.

For now, it’s business as usual. But if the weed pass passes, in Amsterdam, then it may be the economy that goes, well, up in smoke.

WEB

More Amsterdam Maps

Thanks to ACD's Lemming and Google

Southern Main Canals

Amsterdam Eastern Main Canals and Jodenhoek

Amsterdan Old West

Amsterdam West