Toke of the Town

Search Results: foreigners (20)

Protesters Decry Dutch Cannabis Ban

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By on Dispensaries, Global, News

Marcel Van Hoorn/AFP
A demonstrator in Maastricht holds a giant cardboard joint protesting the new policy requiring Dutch coffee shops to insitute a “weed pass” system banning foreigners, on May 1, 2012.

Tourists smoked spliffs in the streets of cities in the southern Netherlands and defiant coffee shop owners sold joints to visitors in a protest on the selling of marijuana to foreigners which took effect on Tuesday.

Protesters in Maastricht — near the Belgian border — waved banners with marijuana leaves and slogans such as “Dealers Wanted” and “Stop Discrimination for Belgium,” report Svebor Kranjc and Thomas Escritt of Reuters.
A few hundred demonstrators gathered in the main square, with about 50 of them openly smoking joints alongside a six-foot-long fake spliff.
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Dutch Group: Cannabis Coffeeshops Deserve Heritage Protection

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By on Dispensaries, Global, News

Floris Leeuwenberg
Cannabis coffeeshops are an integral part of Dutch culture, and have been for decades. A Dutch cannabis consumers group, WeSmoke, says the shops are worthy of preservation as UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

The Netherlands, for reasons known only to the conservative government, seems intent on barring foreigners from its world-famous “coffeeshops” where cannabis is sold. That’s wholly nonsensical, since the shops are a major source of tourist dollars for Amsterdam and most of the other cities where they operate.
But curtailment of the shops — or even complete closure, which could be one of the repercussions of the new rules — would be more than an economic loss to the Netherlands, according to one Dutch pro-cannabis group. It would be a tragic loss of cultural heritage, as well.
Because of that, the Dutch cannabis consumer association WeSmoke has asked that the coffeeshops of the Netherlands be included on UNESCO World Heritage Site list, giving them protection as the unique cultural icons they are.
“World Heritage Sites are commonly understood to be culturally and/or natural important heritage that can be considered irreplaceable, unique and property of the entire world,” said Dimitri Breeuwer of WeSmoke. “This is why we can only conclude the unique Dutch coffeeshop, the very center of the cannabis legalization policies belongs on the UNESCO World Heritage Site list.”
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Cannabis Tolerance Endangered In Netherlands; Protest Planned

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By on Global, Legislation, News

NL Coffeeshop & Cannabis Nieuws

​In a maddening show of spineless backsliding after 35 years of tolerance, the conservative government of the Netherlands seems hellbent on turning the clock back to a darker time in Dutch history — a time when the cannabis trade was driven underground and people had to access the black market for marijuana.

And, of course, in our interconnected world, such a failure of leadership would reverberate internationally, according to expert observers.
“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.
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Netherlands Delays Plan To Ban Tourists From Buying Marijuana

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By on Dispensaries, Global, Legislation

THC Finder
The Dutch make lots of money on cannabis tourism — so obviously, that’s a problem they have to fix. Wait a minute…

​The conservative government of the Netherlands said on Thursday it is delaying plans to ban tourists from buying marijuana in Dutch “coffee shops” until at least May 2012 — but said it still intends to implement the ban.

Cannabis, contrary to popular belief, is still technically illegal in the Netherlands, but police “tolerate” the possession of small amounts, and pot is sold openly in the coffee shops, reports the Associated Press. Large-scale growers still face possible arrest.
The Dutch Cabinet wants to introduce a “weed pass” system allowing only legal residents of the Netherlands to buy marijuana in the shops.
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Ban On Tourists In Dutch Cannabis Cafes To Begin Jan. 1

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By on Dispensaries, Global, News

Radio Netherlands Worldwide

​Foreign visitors will be banned from the “coffee shops” which sell cannabis in southern Netherlands starting January 1, supposedly to combat “anti-social behavior” among tourists. (So when do the tourists get banned from bars?) The ban won’t hit Amsterdam, however, until a year later, in 2013.

The Dutch Justice Ministry announced the ban was going forward after a consultation period, despite opposition from some MPs who called the move “tourism suicide, reports Travelmail Reporter at the Daily Mail.
Licensed coffee shops will be considered private clubs under the new rules. Their maximum of 2,000 members will be limited to Dutch residents 18 and older who carry a so-called “dope card.”
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Dutch Decide To Treat ‘Strong Marijuana’ As A Hard Drug

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By on Dispensaries, Global, Legislation

Peter Lunk
If that joint Dutch blogger Peter Lunk is smoking contains more than 15 percent THC, he just became a “hard drug user” according to official Dutch policy. Insanity abounds.

​About half the cannabis sold in the Netherlands just got banned — because it’s too good. According to the Dutch government, that joint of White Widow you’re smoking is just as bad as heroin or meth. And if they catch you smoking weed they think is “too good,” they can throw you into drug rehab for it.

The Dutch have been a source of both exhilaration and exasperation with their hard-to-pin-down cannabis policies for the past 40 years. Often held up as a model of tolerance by those in less-permissive countries, they actually have some serious perception problems of their own.

A couple of those have come to light recently, first with a move afoot (and gaining ground) to ban foreigners from “coffee shops” in the Netherlands, which sell marijuana and hashish to customers under an odd policy of “official tolerance” wherein cannabis is still officially illegal.
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11 Things Holder Could Say About Pot That Would Make Me Happy

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By on Culture

Photo: The Troubled Patriot

​​​By Jack Rikess

Toke of the Town

Northern California Correspondent


U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that he will “work with states” to clarify the Department of Justice’s position on medical marijuana. This is what I’d like him to say…
11. Marijuana is no longer a Schedule I drug.
The Good News: Marijuana will finally be reclassified as having medical value.
Bad News: Big Pharma doesn’t like to share…

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There Goes An Industry: Dutch To Ban Cannabis Sales To Tourists

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By on Dispensaries, Global, News

Photo: NORML Blog
What do you do when you have a booming, very profitable marijuana tourism industry? Shut it down, of course! If you’re the conservative Dutch government and have your head up your ezel.

​There goes the tourism industry.

In a hare-brained move, the new conservative government of the Netherlands said on Wednesday it plans to ban tourists from buying cannabis in its famed “coffee shops,” where hash and marijuana are legally sold. The shops have become a very popular attraction for travelers from other countries.
The new government, which took office last month, has agreed to limit the sale of cannabis to Dutch residents only, to curb supposed crime linked to its production and sale.
“No tourist attractions. We don’t like that,” said Ivo Opstelten, the Dutch minister for security and justice on Wednesday, reports Gilbert Kreijger of Reuters.
“The heart of the problem is crime and disturbances surrounding the sale,” Opstolten claimed. “We have to go back to what it was meant for: local use for those who would like it.”
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Court Advisor Claims Dutch Cannabis Ban Justified For Tourists

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By on Global, News

Photo: Briarpatch
It’s not going to be Easy Going for you if you want to buy hash at this coffee shop — unless you’re Dutch.

​The Netherlands can ban over-the counter sales of marijuana in Dutch “coffee shops” to nonresidents to end drug tourism from other countries, a senior advisor to the European Union high court said Thursday, reports The Associated Press.

The advisor, Yves Bot, senselessly claimed a Dutch city’s ban on foreign customers in the shops is a “lawful and necessary measure” to cut crime and keep the peace, reports Stephanie Bodoni at Bloomberg.
“As drug tourism represents a genuine and sufficiently serious threat to public order in Maastricht, the exclusion of non-residents from coffee shops” is a “necessary” way of protecting residents, Bot said.
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Exclusive Interview: America’s Longest Serving Pot Prisoner

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By on Culture, Products


Photo: Robert Platshorn
Robert Platshorn, the Black Tuna, brought a million pounds of Colombian gold to American shores.

​If you were an American pothead in the 1970s, you probably smoked some of Robert Platshorn’s weed. His organization brought in tons of fine Colombian when it was considered some of the best pot in the world. And that’s the reason Platshorn later became the longest serving marijuana prisoner in U.S. history, doing 29 years inside the federal prison system.

Much of the primo Colombian flooding the U.S. marijuana market in the late 70s could be traced back to the Black Tuna Gang, a major smuggling ring which once brought 500 tons of pot into the United States over a 16-month period.
I remember well the sweet, potent buds of Santa Marta Gold that were available in 1977 and 1978. Possessed of a soaring sativa high and mind-blowing expansion in the lungs, this ‘lombo weed became the gold standard of connoisseur pot to a generation of appreciative stoners. To this day, I think of Colombian weed every time I hear Rush or Blue Öyster Cult.
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