No Fear or Loathing

National Review, August 29, 2005

I was somewhere around Oudezijds Voorburgwal, on the edge of Amsterdam’s Red Light District, when I knew that the drugs would never take hold. My vision was bad, but then it always is; my judgment was no worse than normal; and my usual bleak mood was no better. I had absolutely no interest in tie-dye, Hermann Hesse, granny glasses, world peace, the teachings of the Buddha, or a flower in my hair. I was a loser Leary, a deadbeat De Quincey.

It had all seemed so much simpler just a few hours before. I’d been sitting in an old café on Spuistraat discussing the state of Dutch politics (bad) over a few Dutch beers (good) with my friend Henk. Sixteen biertjes later (between us, between us), it was time to move on. Henk was saying something feeble about a heavily pregnant wife, had to be by her side, baby due any moment, and I, well, I felt the call of investigative journalism. Holland’s reefer madness had to be checked out. Thoroughly.

Cannabis is not exactly legal in the Netherlands. But it’s not exactly illegal either. Finding out exactly what the country’s policy of tolerance (gedoogbeleid) means is about as easy as following stoner logic, but its result is that in certain cities so-called “coffee shops” are allowed to sell small amounts of cannabis (a maximum of five grams at a time) to their customers. Coffee shops are licensed; they pay tax and are regulated: Alcohol is rarely on offer, hard drugs are strictly forbidden, and even soft drugs cannot be advertised. No minors are permitted on the premises, and you have to be 18 before you can graze on the grass (the drinking age in the Netherlands is 16). Finally, in a last, faint, despairing echo of the country’s Calvinist past, a coffee shop can be closed down if it’s a “nuisance.”

And in recent years, many have been. As always, when anything bad happens, France is involved. Concerned by the number of their nationals traveling to the Netherlands to stock up on pot, both France and Germany have been putting pressure on the Dutch to close down the coffee shops, or at least insist that only Dutch citizens be permitted to use them. For the most part, the Dutch have paid no attention, but the purchase limit was reduced to the current five grams (from 30) and other regulations were more strictly enforced. According to the possibly reliable Smokers Guide to Amsterdam (“an unbiased view of Amsterdam for casual party people”) the number of coffee shops in the city fell from 480 in 1990 to 279 in 2001. Once the less permissive center-right Christian Democrats came to power in 2002 this crackdown went further still. A little over 200 coffee shops survive there today.

But that was more than enough to choose from. Even after I had, um, weeded out the coffee shops with names that were either too redolent of the 1960s (The Doors, Flower, Kasbah, the Kashmir Lounge, Mellow Yellow, and Pink Floyd), too scary (Lucifera, Ruthless, Stud, and Xtreme), too derivative (Rick’s Café), too tactless (Midnight-Express), or unacceptably dependent on puns (High School, High Time, Highlander, and Highway), a wide selection still remained. Some were too seedy, others too hip; the place I eventually found was relaxed and welcoming even if some of the people there appeared really, really surprised to see me.

Perhaps my suit, tie, and shirt (Jermyn Street, since you ask) were to blame. Or was the problem my age, a Cruise-Holmes span away from that of the pretty young waitress? Maybe it was just that I quite clearly didn’t know what I was doing. I hadn’t brought any tobacco with me, or any rolling papers, or even a lighter. The menu was meaningless, but vaguely alarming. White Widow? Bubblegum? Domina Haze? Manali Crema? I felt confident that AK47 was not the way to go, but as for the rest . . .

“Have you ever smoked?” asked the young, young, young waitress, anxiously.

“I was at university during the 1970s,” I replied ambiguously, plagiarizing Newt Gingrich.

She laughed, and I bought five pre-rolled joints for twenty euros — dope for beginners, I suspected, a trip with training wheels. I smoked them quietly in a corner, reading The Economist (what did you expect, High Times?), while the other customers sat across the room, puffing on Bubblegum, occasionally glancing over at this misplaced Methuselah and his Economist and wondering, probably, whether the BTK killer had been caught after all. After an hour or so, nothing seemed to be happening. The joints smelled like 1967, but their effect was 1957. Had years of legal intoxicants taken their toll, or had I simply been had? Supplementing my sad-sap spliffs with more potent space cakes (“once you’re on the ride,” cautioned the Smokers Guide, “there’s no immediate way off!”) seemed unwise. It was time to go. So I did.

If space cakes were unwise, Amsterdam’s “smart shops” look really dumb. These stoner apothecaries, a more recent arrival, sell not cannabis, but a wide selection of nature’s naughtier productions: herbs, mushrooms, cacti, and odd, unidentifiable fungi of the type that usually means trouble in sci-fi movies too low-budget to spring for a proper alien. Some of their offerings may not work at all: To believe in a “natural Viagra best boiled in vodka” took, I felt, brains more thoroughly boiled in vodka even than mine. Others may work all too well: After some Salvia, “your balance is completely lost; gravity pulls you in amazing ways.” Oh, okay.

But Holland as a whole has not lost its balance. There’s no room to recite all the arguments here, but if the coffee-shop experiment has not worked quite as well as some of its boosters claim, its critics have fared even worse. Per capita cannabis consumption in the Netherlands is estimated to be at the EU average, and rather below that prevailing in these Altered States of America; and the Dutch, of course, have avoided much of the destruction, despair, and cost of the drug wars. Disappointingly for drug warriors, there’s no evidence either that easy access to cannabis has acted as a “gateway” to more dangerous pastimes: The incidence of heroin consumption is far less than in the U.S. Overall, Holland has one of the lowest rates of problem drug use in Western Europe.

If there is an objection to the coffee shops, it’s aesthetic. Owing to them, Amsterdam has become to cannabis what Bourbon Street is to Hurricanes. This fine old bourgeois city is in danger of turning into a euro-Kathmandu, a druggy destination overwhelmed by day trippers (literally), cannabis kitsch, and counterculture dreck — which could end up destroying the typically civil Dutch compromise that has made this experiment possible.

And then there are the town’s proliferating cannabis snobs, like wine bores only, somehow, even more irritating. You can read what they have to say (Nepal Temple Balls have, apparently, a “buzzy, chatty high that makes you zone”) on coffee-shop menus and in numerous guidebooks. Or go and hear for yourself. I joined the crowd downstairs at the “Cannabis College” on Oudezijdes Achterburgwal to gaze at some outlaw botany and listen to the mumbling, muttering, meandering Yoda who was its custodian. I could take the interminable, rambling discussion of the merits of one plant over another, but when he started referring to them as his “girls,” I knew that it was time for something else: A good, stiff drink.