Thanks to tolerant laws concerning soft drugs, the Dutch have become the undisputed European masters of cannabis agriculture. Their local production: more than 100 tons per year, worth at least 1.5 billion francs.

AMSTERDAM has become the soft drug world capital. From the 21^st to 28^th of November, the charming, historical city will host the eleventh High Times’ Cup, better known by enthusiasts as "the Amsterdam cannabis cup." "Not less than seventy-five varieties of hashish and herbal cannabis will be tasted with the same seriousness as that granted to wines of Burgundy," announced Essensie, the magazine of cannabis agriculture and psychedelic drug enthusiasts. The reason of the choice of Amsterdam seems evident: No where else on the globe is there is such a concentration of shops for cannabis and paraphernalia.
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Despite a political will to reduce their number, we nevertheless find in Holland, from Maastricht in the South, to Groningen in the North, 1200 to 1500 coffee-shops.

Also local authorities have the authority to close the shops if they don’t want any in their cities. A few cities have done so, but more have opened city-sponsored shops to keep the local kids from going to the larger cities.)

In about 12 years, Dutch growers have become undisputed masters of the production, cloning, and general expertise regarding the plant, regularly creating new varieties whose tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content is higher than that of the more traditional products of Thailand, Jamaica or Lebanon.
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This dominant position is the result of a several factors: The immigration of American specialists who came to Amsterdam when California became dangerous because of the drug-war; The traditional Dutch governmental tolerance on soft drugs, the sale and the production of which are decriminalized; And the expertise of Dutch agriculture in the growing of many vegetables and fruits under greenhouses.

In 1989, only 10% of the sales in coffee-shops came from the "nederwiet", a local cannabis with so strong an odor that it was baptized skank ("skunk").
(Marijuananews note: Nederwiet is any Dutch grown cannabis, whether "skunk" or otherwise.)

The other 90 % came from the traditional countries of production. Today, cannabis growers have the choice among dozens of varieties, and almost all the cannabis sold in coffee-shops is grown in Holland. Concerning hashish however, made from cannabis, Moroccan and Afghanese remain best sellers despite some trials to produce it locally, notably with new and ingenious hash-making machines, such as the "pollinator."
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Since the release of a governmental white-paper on drugs in October 1995, the commercial growing of cannabis is forbidden, while production "in small quantity" is tolerated. The government’s aim is to fight the criminalization of that activity and they hope that small growers will sell their harvests directly to the local coffee-shops. Nothing proves that this political tactic has worked. Nevertheless, these new provisions have resulted in an explosion of "grow shops."

(Marijuananews note: The Dutch have a general policy of encouraging small business. The Dutch are far more entrepreneurial than most Europeans, but there are also many more regulations and taxes on business than is customary in America.)

Interpolm, Home Grow Shop, Plant 2000, Positive Grow, Greenpoint

There are already between 150 and 200 grow shops in Holland, compared to only 3 twelve years ago. These shops offer absolutely all the needed equipment for cannabis growing. The activity, which requires a good "green thumb," can be organized in the open, but also at home, in a "loft" or in a greenhouse. The more effective growers will use special lamps, irrigation systems and air conditioning systems and, of course, they only use quality seeds.

For quite some time now the sale of clones has been forbidden, which, insist the specialists, has reduced the size of the harvests. Adrien Jansen, a professor and researcher at the Institute of Economics of Amsterdam University and expert on the economy of cannabis, published a socio-economic survey on coffee-shops. He estimates that indoors, an individual producer can harvest one kilogram of herb per year per square meter.
(Marijuananews note: A kilo will bring around 5,000 guilders or US$2,400 wholesale. Some special varieties will bring more.)

A visit to a Dutch grow shop might well produce a heart attack for any French crusader of soft drug prohibition: a great diversity of seeds— from the least expensive to the best: White Widow, or Black Domina that produces "an enigmatic smile on your face", -- many kinds of lamps, fertilisers, living insects which will kill and eat cannabis parasites, irrigation systems, and even "THC Boosters" which will increase the THC-content of your plants, etc.

Grow shops are bathed in the bitterweet odor of cannabis. Most proudly display their own production: veritable bushes crowned with flowers sticky with resin. Employees are there to sell, but also to provide advice to clients. Those who wish to learn more can buy one of the innumerable guides for succeeding with their harvests, translated into most European languages. Belgians and Hollanders can subscribe to "Essensie," a thick grower’s magazine that gives practical advice, tests of new products and specialized advertisements. There are also "beginner’s kits" for growers or more sophisticated automated systems, intended to be buried for security while waiting for the harvest. During a recent visit in a grow shop, we met two young French growers "from Marseille" who ordered one of these wonder installations, just because they fear the French cops! Possessing lamps or even seeds is not illegal in France, but of course, growing is forbidden.

The pioneer of Dutch grow shops was also a hashish smuggler long before being the creator and owner of the first Dutch coffee shop, "Mellow Yellow" in Amsterdam. Adrien Jansen tells the story: "Wernard was the greater innovator, he invented new practices, he found solutions to any and all problems, he decided to be the prototype and entrepreneur of this new activity."

Recently, Wernard lost Positronics, his grow shop which was famous for its foot ball table-soccer game ("the only game that one can play better when stoned" he said.) "Some time ago, Positronics was selling too many clones, so Wernard decided not to sell more than forty clones per client" explains a friend. "But some of his employees didn’t obey and went on delivering a lot more in secret. Relations between employees deteriorated, some employees lost their job." And then, Positronics collapsed. "A lot of owners of grow shops have no sense of organization and are quickly overcome by events," explains Adrien Jansen.
(Marijuananews note: Positronics was a wonderful place, and Wernard is a great guy.)

If there is one entrepreneur in this market who has always kept his head on his shoulders it is Ben Dronkers. This small and calm 48 year old man is the owner of a true cannabis growing and trading empire with a turnover of 4 to 6 million Dutch florins (Marijuananews note: "Florin" is just another term for the guilder, around 53 US cents.) per year and more than an additional million for paraphernalia, but these numbers are judged as an underestimation by many officials. But Dronkers hastens to add: "I’m just a hippie trying to appear serious in a conventional Dutch way. In fact, there is a much stronger and more fundamental inner link that binds me to cannabis."
(Marijuananews note: Ben truly loves the plant. He has spent millions developing an industrial hemp operation in the north, near Groningen.)
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THE STORIES of Wernard and Ben Dronkers illustrate the Dutch attitude concerning soft drugs. "I’ve been a cannabis smoker for 31 years," says Ben while rolling thin and fragrant joints. During travels in the Orient, he made long visits to growers of cannabis to learn of their methods. "There I understood that the quality of the seeds was more important that the method of growing." Back in Holland, Dronkers studied the growing of tomatoes and tulips under greenhouses. Dronkers also founded a chain of coffee shops, Sensi Smile, and a Cannabis Museum, in a charming house right in the heart of the red-light district of Amsterdam, between prostitutes in windows on one side and emaciated dealers of "brown" and bad ecstasy on the other. (Marijuananews note: No, the museum is in the district, but it is next to the Sensi grow shop, which is on the corner of the main "street" in to the district. There are no prostitutes in windows on either side. It is also just down the street from the Cannabis College and the Tattoo Museum.
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I have never seen an "emaciated dealer" of anything in Holland, but there are usually one or two guys trying to sell something to the stupider tourists, even "hash." Anyone who buys hash on the street in Amsterdam is really dumb. That would be like buying booze on the street in Washington.)

"The museum attracts eighty thousand visitors per year," affirms Dronkers, "despite a 24 FFr. entrance ticket." (Marijuananews note: The French franc is around 18 US cents.)

Dronkers founded an association of coffee-shop proprietors and became one of the privileged partners for dialogs with the local or national authorities, a specialist of the legislation of cannabis. Ben Dronkers wants to purify a branch of the association which is "polluted" by some owners who don’t respect the legal instructions about the limits of tolerance: no hard drugs, no sale to thole less than sixteen years of age, no deal of more than 30 grams, (5 grams since the most recent directive), no advertisement, no disturbing of the public order.
(Marijuananews note: Actually, the Dutch government wanted a coffee-shop owners association so that they would have someone to talk to. This is the Dutch way of doing things. There is even an organization of heroin addicts, the Junkie-bund.)

His son, Alan, is now the manager of the coffee shops and the ongoing ideological fight. Ben confesses: "I am tired of fighting."
Copyright: Le Monde

December 27, 1998
From The Guardian Weekly
weekly@guardian.co.uk
By Jon Henley in Amsterdam
International News

DUTCH GET TO GRIPS WITH DRUG SHOPS

Jon Henley in Amsterdam

KOKOPELLI is on the Warmoesstraat in the middle of the red light district, two minutes from the railway station and less than 50 metres from the police station. It is bright and airy with stripped pine floors. Tall rear windows overlook a stately 17^th century canal. Anywhere else it might be a designer clothes shop; this being Amsterdam, it is a designer drugs shop.

How exactly do you legislate against magic mushrooms and psycho-active cacti—not to mention those little white tablets that are almost, but not quite, Ecstasy?

"Everything we sell here is completely legal," insisted Jeroen Burger, a spokesman for Conscious Dreams, the small but fast-growing company that launched the smart shop craze and recently opened Kokopelli. "OK, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms is on the list of banned drugs. But we don’t sell the active ingredient. We sell the natural product."

Natural it may be, but the effect can be as powerful as many outlawed hard drugs. Take, for example, Psilocybe tampanensis, the Magic Truffle, disarmingly described as triggering a "remarkably clear trip, but not too disorienting". Or Panaeolus cyanascens, which is "metabolised very quickly, making the trip come on fast and strong". Both cost about $50 for five. In Mr Burger’s words, they amount to "legal hard drugs".

Moving up the scale of natural hallucinogens, Kokopelli also sells an innocent-looking plant called Salvia divinorum. It carries a kick like a mule: anyone choosing to smoke its leaves is advised to do so with friends so they can catch the pipe.

The Netherlands already has its 1,200 famous coffee-shops, where the sale of small quantities of marijuana for personal use is tolerated, in the belief that it is better to keep such things out in the open, where they can be supervised, than drive them underground. In a recent long report, the Dutch health ministry tried to get to grips with the smart-shop phenomenon. It wanted to know whether they were a potentially lethal new development, or merely a kind of alternative chemist, offering "safe" alternatives to banned drugs.

Its conclusion, firmly in the Dutch tradition of respect for individual liberty, was that they were "not an unacceptable danger to society". For the time being they will be tolerated, and closely watched.

They need watching closely. Because smart shops are also engaged in a continual cat-and-mouse game with the authorities over synthetic drugs.

A couple of years ago GHB was banned outright when six Rotterdam teenagers fell into a near-coma after combining it with alcohol. Within weeks, a laboratory had produced an alternative.

Beneath Kokopelli’s glass-topped counter lie some white pills -- 2C.T.2 -- described in its accompanying literature as a "psychedelic amphetamine". It is sold in sets of two 8mg tablets, but beginners are strongly advised to take just one, with a large amount of water. "Do not take 2C.T.2 alone unless you are an experienced user," the handout warns. "Do not take it if you are pregnant, diabetic, have high or low blood pressure, a heart disease, have ever had hepatitis A or B, or have drunk alcohol."

To Mr Burger this is responsible Dutch drug dealing at its best. "You see, the danger hardly ever lies in the product itself, but in the person using it," he said.

"We test every product personally, and give detailed information to each buyer. People will buy it anyway, and it’s far better they do it from us than from some street-corner dealer."

That is also, in essence, the policy of the health ministry. But do be careful to follow the instructions.