Rick Steves Travel as a Political Act

by Rick Steves

  Throughout the Netherlands, you’ll see “coffeeshops”: cafés selling marijuana. The minimum age for purchase is 18, and coffeeshops can sell up to five grams of marijuana per person per day. As long as you’re a paying customer (for instance, you buy a drink), you can pop into any coffeeshop and light up, even if you didn’t buy your pot there.

  Because of laws prohibiting the advertising of marijuana, the customer must take the initiative to get the menu. Locals buy marijuana by asking, “Can I see the cannabis menu?” In some coffeeshops, customers actually have to push and hold down a button to see an illuminated menu—the contents of which look like the inventory of a drug bust.

  In a Dutch coffeeshop, the menu features service with a smile—and imaginative names for its marijuana.

  The Dutch smoke both hashish (the sap of the cannabis plant) and the leaf of the plant (which they call “marihuana” or “grass”). Pre-rolled joints are sold individually ($4-7, depending on the strain), though some places sell only small packs of three or four joints. Joints come in three varieties: pure, with a “hamburger helper” herb mix, or with tobacco. Any place that caters to Americans sells joints without tobacco, but you have to ask specifically for a “pure” joint. Shops also sell baggies for $15 to $20. They dispense rolling papers like toothpicks, and customers can borrow a bong or an inhaler. I’m told the better pot, though costlier, is actually a better value, as it takes less to get high—and it’s a better high.

  Essentially legal since 1976, an impressive variety of marijuana joints fills the sales racks in Dutch coffeeshops.

  Because pot is retailed much like beer or cigarettes, varieties evolve with demand. While each shop has different brands, it’s all derived from two types of the marijuana plant: Cannabis indica and Cannabis sativa. Indica gets you a stoned, heavy, mellow high—it makes you just sit on the couch. Sativa is light, fun, uplifting, and more psychedelic—it makes you giggle.

  Most of the pot sold in Dutch coffeeshops is grown locally, as coffeeshops find it’s much safer to deal with Dutch-grown plants than to import marijuana (the EU, as you might imagine, prohibits any international drug trade). “Netherlands weed” is now refined, like wine. The Dutch are wizards in a greenhouse, and technological advances have made it easier to cultivate exotic strains. You may see joints described as if they’d come from overseas, such as “Thai”—and, indeed, the strain may have originated elsewhere—but it’s still Dutch-grown.

  While most American pot smokers like their joints made purely of marijuana, the Dutch (like most Europeans) are accustomed to mixing tobacco with marijuana. Back in the 1970s, most locals smoked hash, which needs to be mixed with something else (like tobacco) to light up. Pot was expensive, and it was simply wasteful to pass around a pure marijuana joint. Mixing in tobacco allowed poor hippies to be generous without going broke. Today, more Dutch prefer “herbal cannabis”—the marijuana bud common in the US—but they still keep the familiar tobacco in their joints. And since the Dutch don’t dry and cure their marijuana, it’s simply hard to smoke without tobacco.

  The Netherlands’ indoor-smoking ban pertains to tobacco smoke, not pot smoke. It might seem strange to an American, but these days, if a coffeeshop is busted, it’s probably for tobacco. Coffeeshops with a few outdoor seats have a huge advantage, as their customers can light up tobacco-and-marijuana joints outside. Shops without an outdoor option are in for an extra challenge, as many local smokers would rather get their weed to go than smoke it without tobacco at their neighborhood coffeeshop.

  Coffeeshop baristas are generally very patient in explaining the varieties available, and try to warn Americans (who aren’t used to the strength of the local stuff) to try a lighter leaf. Tourists who haven’t smoked pot since their college days are notorious for overindulging in Amsterdam. Baristas nickname tourists about to pass out “Whitey”—the color their faces turn just before they hit the floor. To keep this from happening, the key is to eat or drink something sweet. Cola is a good fast fix, and coffeeshops keep sugar tablets handy.

  Legally, while each coffeeshop can sell as much as it likes, it’s permitted to keep an inventory of only 500 grams (about one pound) of pot in stock. The tax authorities don’t want to see more than that on the books at the end of each accounting cycle, and being caught with too much can cause a shop to lose its license. A popular shop—whose supply must be replenished five or six times a day—simply has to put up with the hassle of constantly taking small deliveries. The reason? Authorities want shops to stay small and not become export bases—which would bring more international pressure on the Netherlands to crack down on its coffeeshop culture. (A few years ago, Amsterdam’s mayor—understanding that this regulation just has the city busy with small-time deliveries—proposed doubling the allowable inventory level to a kilo. Just the thought of a big city mayor grappling with a practical issue like street congestion caused by needlessly small wholesale marijuana deliveries is striking.)

  The Prohibition of Our Age

  Travel teaches us a respect for history. And when it comes to drug policy, I hope we can learn from our own prohibitionist past. Back in the 1920s, America’s biggest drug problem was alcohol. To combat it, we made booze illegal and instituted Prohibition. By any sober assessment, all that Prohibition produced was grief. By criminalizing a soft drug that people refused to stop enjoying, Prohibition created the mob (Al Capone and company), filled our prisons, and cost our society a lot of money. It was big government at its worst. Finally, courageous citizens stood up and said the laws against alcohol were causing more problems than the alcohol itself. When Prohibition was repealed in 1933, nobody was saying “booze is good.” Society just realized that the laws were counterproductive and impossible to enforce. In our own age, many lawyers, police officers, judges, and other concerned citizens are coming to the same conclusion about the current US government-sponsored prohibition against marijuana.

  At Seattle’s annual Hempfest, 100,000 people call for an end to America’s prohibition on marijuana. On the main stage, I talk up Europe’s more pragmatic approach to drug abuse.

  The wholesale dimension of the marijuana business is the famous “gray area” in the law. Rather than deal with that complex issue, Dutch lawmakers just left wholesaling out of the equation, taking the “don’t ask, don’t tell” route. Most shops get their inventory from the pot equivalent of home brewers or micro-brewers. Shops with better “boutique suppliers” get the reputation for having better-quality weed (and regularly win the annual Cannabis Cup trophy).

  Everyone I’ve talked with in Amsterdam agrees that pot should never be bought on the street. Well-established coffeeshops are considered much safer, as their owners have an incentive to keep their trade safe and healthy.

  The Dutch are not necessarily “pro-marijuana.” In fact, most have never tried it or even set foot in a coffeeshop. They just don’t think the state has any business preventing the people who want it from getting it in a sensible way. To appease Dutch people who aren’t comfortable with marijuana, an integral component of the coffeeshop system is discretion. It’s bad form to smoke marijuana openly while on the street. Dutch people who don’t like pot don’t have to encounter or even smell it. And towns that don’t want coffeeshops don’t have them.

  Easygoing as the Dutch may seem about smoking pot, many in the Netherlands want to tighten things up. In the early 2010s, there was a new round of political pressure to recriminalize. Local right-wingers, conservative Christian groups, and the American government have all pressured the Netherlands government to restrict its marijuana policies. This has pitted federal authorities in the Netherlands against mayors. Generally mayors, who are responsible for crime on their streets, advocate for the legal retail sale of marijuana in coffeeshops. They know when coffeeshops are shut down, the criminal activity that goes along with criminals selling pot on the streets spikes.

  A 2011 Dutch law sought to close coffeeshops near schools, and coffeeshop licenses have not been ren
ewed in certain neighborhoods—as towns and cities want to keep a broad smattering of shops rather than a big concentration in any one area. Consequently, the number of coffeeshops in Amsterdam has fallen from a peak of more than 700 (in the mid-1990s) to about 200 today. With all of this pressure, coffeeshop proprietors are scrambling to be good citizens and nurture good relations with their neighbors. Meanwhile, Dutch pot smokers complain that the generation that ran naked on acid around Amsterdam’s Vondelpark during the ’60s is now threatening the Netherlands’ well-established, regulated marijuana trade.

  One of the biggest concerns with the coffeeshop system is “marijuana tourism.” It’s no coincidence that Amsterdam has become a mecca for harmless but occasionally obnoxious backpackers eager to legally light up. And neighboring countries (France and Germany) complain that it’s too easy for their citizens to make drug runs across the border. In response, some Dutch border towns have implemented a “weed pass” system, allowing pot sales only to registered Dutch citizens. But the independent-minded Dutch (especially young people) don’t want to be registered as pot users, so they’re buying it on the street—rekindling the black market, and, many fear, the crime and social problems associated with the sale of pot on the streets by criminals rather than by businessmen in licensed coffeeshops. Stay tuned.

  Despite detractors, statistics support the belief that the more pragmatic Dutch system removes crime from the equation without unduly increasing consumption: After nearly 40 years of handling marijuana this way, Dutch experts in the field of drug-abuse prevention agree that, while marijuana use has increased slightly, it has not increased more than in other European countries where pot smokers are being arrested. (According to EU statistics, 23 percent of Dutch people have used pot, compared to more than 30 percent of Italians, French, and Brits.) My Dutch friends also enjoy pointing out that, while three recent US presidents—Clinton, Bush, Obama—admitted or implied that they’ve smoked marijuana, no Dutch prime minister ever has.

  Dutch parents generally agree with their country’s lenient approach to marijuana. The Dutch have seen no significant change in marijuana consumption among teens (who, according to both US and EU government statistics, smoke pot at half the US rate). Meanwhile, in the US, many teens report that it’s easier for them to buy marijuana than tobacco or alcohol—because they don’t get carded when buying something illegally.

  It’s interesting to compare European use to the situation back home, where (in most states where it’s not yet legal) marijuana laws are strictly enforced. According to Pew Research Center statistics, approximately half of all American adults have used marijuana at some point in their life. Various economists estimate that illegal marijuana is an approximately $100 billion untaxed industry in our country. The FBI reports that almost 50 percent of the roughly 1.8 million annual drug arrests in the US are for marijuana—the vast majority (88 percent) for simple possession…that means users, not dealers.

  Many Dutch people believe that their pot policies have also contributed to the fact that they have fewer hard drug problems than other countries. The thinking goes like this: A certain segment of the population will experiment with drugs regardless. The coffeeshop scene allows people to do this safely, with soft drugs. Police see the coffeeshops as a firewall separating soft drug use from hard drug abuse in their communities. If there is a dangerous chemical being pushed on the streets, for example, the police (with the help of coffeeshop proprietors) communicate to the drug-taking part of their society via the coffeeshops. When considering the so-called “gateway” effect of marijuana, the only change the police have seen in local heroin use is that the average age of a Dutch needle addict is getting older. In fact, many people believe marijuana only acts as a “gateway” drug when it is illegal—because then, young people have no option but to buy it from pushers on the street, who have an economic incentive to get them hooked on more expensive and addictive hard drugs.

  Dutch cops, happy to ignore pot smokers since 1976 (but still tough on hard drugs), measure the effectiveness of their society’s drug policy in terms of harm reduction.

  The hope and hunch is that people go through their drug-experimentation phase innocently with pot, and then the vast majority move on in life without getting sucked into harder, more dangerous drugs. Again, the numbers bear this out: Surveys show that more than three times as many Americans (1.5%) report having tried heroin as Dutch people (0.5%).

  Studying how the Dutch retail marijuana is interesting. It’s also helpful because learning how another society confronts a persistent problem differently than we do can help us envision how we might deal with the same problem more effectively. I agree with my Dutch friends, who remind me that a society has to make a choice: tolerate alternative lifestyles… or build more prisons. The Netherlands has made its choice. We’re still building more prisons. My Dutch friends needle me with the fact that the US has the world’s highest incarceration rate—nearly 10 times the Dutch rate—at an annual cost of $60 billion. I also agree with New York Mayor LaGuardia. Way back in the 1930s, when it was becoming clear that America’s Prohibition on alcohol wasn’t working, LaGuardia said that if a society has a law on the books that it doesn’t intend to enforce consistently, it erodes respect for all laws in general.

  While the Dutch are famously lenient in their marijuana laws, many other European countries are also progressive on this issue. I’ve chatted with people passing a joint as they played backgammon in the shadow of the cathedral in Bern. They told me that marijuana enforcement is stricter in Switzerland each spring at the start of the travel season, so the country doesn’t become a magnet for marijuana tourism. And I’ve talked with twentysomethings in Copenhagen rolling a joint on the steps of their city hall, who explain that—because of an international trade agreement the US wrote and pushed through the United Nations—they have to be careful, because the Danish government is required to arrest a couple of pot smokers each year in order to maintain favored trade status with the US.

  The Swiss Approach to Hard Drugs

  Marijuana is one thing. But hard drugs—such as heroin—are another. And, even as some European countries are liberalizing their approach to pot, they draw a clear distinction between “soft” and “hard” drugs. Hard drug abuse is a concern in Europe—with an estimated two million problem users—just as it is in the US. There is no easy solution. But the pragmatic European approach—based on harm reduction rather than punishment for an immoral act—appears to have had some success. Switzerland has been at the forefront of these efforts.

  If you don’t want junkies shooting up in your toilet, just install blue lights.

  The last time I was in Switzerland, I dropped into a Starbucks in downtown Zürich, went downstairs into the bathroom…and it was all blue. I had stumbled into another example of a creative European drug policy. The Swiss, who don’t want their junkies shooting up in public bathrooms, install blue lights. I couldn’t see my veins…you couldn’t shoot up if you wanted to.

  Of course, this minor frustration wouldn’t stop junkies from finding a fix. Across the street is a machine that once sold cigarettes. Now it sells hygienic, government-subsidized syringes—three for two francs, less than a buck apiece. The Swiss recognize that heroin doesn’t spread HIV/AIDS or other deadly diseases. Dirty needles do. If addicts need more than just sterile needles, they know they can go down the street to a heroin-maintenance clinic for their fix. Rather than steal (or worse) to finance their addiction, they get the services of a nurse and a counselor. Swiss society see addicts as people who are sick rather than criminal, and would like to help addicts stay alive, get off of welfare, and rejoin the workforce. Clinic workers told me that in Switzerland, crime and AIDS cases related to heroin use have decreased, while recovery and employment rates among their clients have increased.

  Swiss machines that once sold cigarettes now sell government-subsidized syringes. When it comes to needles in Switzerland, no one shares.

  When addicts are
n’t nervous about where they’ll get their next fix, consumption goes down (as do overdoses). When demand on the streets goes down, so does the price. This brings down street violence…and is bad news for a pusher’s bottom line. With clean needles and a source providing reliable purity, potency, and quantity, maintaining the addiction becomes less dangerous. With these provisions, you still have an addict—but you remove crime, violence, money, and disease from the equation, so you can treat it for what it is: a health problem for mixed-up people who are screwing up their lives and need help. As Swiss addicts are safely dosed to maintenance levels, they begin to reclaim their lives, get jobs, pay taxes, and—in many cases—kick their habit altogether. Switzerland’s heroin-maintenance centers (now also in Germany and the Netherlands) succeed in reducing the harm caused by drug abuse.

  While heroin-maintenance programs have been relatively successful, Europeans have tried and failed with other programs. For instance, experimental “needle parks” (places where the hard drug-taking community could gather) ended up attracting junkies and creating a public nuisance. These were abandoned for the more low-key maintenance centers. But at least Europeans are dealing with the challenge openly, innovatively, and compassionately.

  In contrast, some observers suggest that the US’s more punitive policies towards addicts cause “junkification”: they marginalize addicts and drive them to dangerous, predatory behaviors—from simple stealing, to mugging, to prostitution, to selling drugs to others. In other words, if you treat heroin addicts like they’re dangerous junkies… that’s exactly what they’ll become.