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New Dutch Law Bans Tobacco, But Not Marijuana
July 03, 2008 12:56 PM
by
findingDulcinea Staff
A new ban on smoking tobacco in the Netherlands’ cafés may have the unintended effect of forcing more customers to smoke pure cannabis.
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The Netherlands’ iconic coffee shops are being forced to reinvent the wheel after a new ban on smoking tobacco in restaurants and cafés went into effect July 1.
The new law bans cigarette smoking but also says that customers can no longer smoke joints that contain a mix of marijuana and tobacco in Amsterdam’s coffee shops, where millions of people go to legally buy and smoke cannabis and hashish on the premises.
Now that milder joints that contain tobacco mixed with cannabis are outlawed, customers can smoke only potent joints filled with pure marijuana, which are not regulated under the ban.
Coffee shop owners are protesting that the law will put them out of business. “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,” said Mark Jacobson, the chairman of a coffee shop owners’ association in The Guardian.
“It’s a bit like saying to someone you can go into a cafe and you can buy a beer, but you can’t drink it there—you’ll have to stick to whisky, rum and vodka,” said Paul Wilhelm, the owner of a popular Amsterdam coffee shop, to The Guardian.
The Netherlands is just the latest country to implement a smoking ban in recent years, as it follows in the footsteps of Turkey, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and parts of the United States.
The new law bans cigarette smoking but also says that customers can no longer smoke joints that contain a mix of marijuana and tobacco in Amsterdam’s coffee shops, where millions of people go to legally buy and smoke cannabis and hashish on the premises.
Now that milder joints that contain tobacco mixed with cannabis are outlawed, customers can smoke only potent joints filled with pure marijuana, which are not regulated under the ban.
Coffee shop owners are protesting that the law will put them out of business. “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,” said Mark Jacobson, the chairman of a coffee shop owners’ association in The Guardian.
“It’s a bit like saying to someone you can go into a cafe and you can buy a beer, but you can’t drink it there—you’ll have to stick to whisky, rum and vodka,” said Paul Wilhelm, the owner of a popular Amsterdam coffee shop, to The Guardian.
The Netherlands is just the latest country to implement a smoking ban in recent years, as it follows in the footsteps of Turkey, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and parts of the United States.
Headline Links: ‘Cannabis Law Leaves Smokers Dazed and Confused’
“A lot of people cannot cope with smoking pure and cough their lungs out,” said Frank, the bar manager at popular Amsterdam coffee shop De Tweede Kamer.
Source: The Telegraph
Dutch coffee shop owners are calling the new law “ridiculous,” according to The Guardian.
Source: The Guardian
Related Topics: Smoking bans and teens; other countries tackle public smoking
The Netherlands has a lower rate of cannabis abuse among young adults than the United States despite its less criminally punitive approach, reported the authors of a survey conducted by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
Source: Fox News
Teens living in U.S. towns that ban smoking in restaurants were 40 percent less likely to become smokers than teens living in towns without a ban, a Boston University School of Public Health study found earlier this year.
Source: findingDulcinea
Turkey, a nation known for its strong tobacco, implemented one of the world’s strictest bans on public smoking in January 2008. It was just the latest of several European countries to stop people lighting up in public spaces, including France and Germany early this year and the United Kingdom in 2007.
Source: findingDulcinea
Reuters provides a roundup of other countries that have enacted restrictions on smoking in the past 16 months.
Source: The Star Online (Reuters)
All 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia regulate smoking to some extent, according to the American Cancer Society. The laws, however, range from restrictions on smoking in certain places such as government buildings. to those that outlaw smoking in almost all public places and workplaces.
Source: American Cancer Society
Reference: Amsterdam’s coffee shops, Netherlands travel guide
Amsterdam’s coffee shops first appeared in the 1970s. They appeal to tourists who are looking for high-quality marijuana and hashish at low costs.
Source: Amsterdam Coffee Shops
The Netherlands offer much more than easy access to marijuana. The findingDulcinea Web Guide to the Netherlands will show you how to get there and where to stay, and provides advice on seeing serene floating flower gardens, the Heineken brewery, distinctive paintings, or the Red Light District.
Source: findingDulcinea
© 2008 Dulcinea Media, Inc.
