Dutch Conservatives Crack Down on Coffee Shops

By Dara Colwell, AlterNet. Posted October 12, 2006.

For international travelers, Amsterdam has long served as a kind of nirvana. Considered a forward-thinking capital light years ahead of the rest of the world, much of the city's exceptional status is due to its coffee shops -- essentially marijuana bars -- where smoking pot is perfectly legal. Coupled with other liberal sex and drug laws that have ensured a level of tolerance no European city can rival, Amsterdam has acted for many as a role model of what an enlightened 21st-century city should be.

But things aren't always what they seem. In recent years the Netherlands, like many countries around the world, has witnessed a rise in conservative power and, with that, a corresponding tightening of its once-famous looseness. The legendary Dutch credo "anything goes" is increasingly becoming a thing of the past, and nowhere is this more apparent than in its coffee shops.

The signs began to appear back in 2004, when the Dutch government consented to ban smoking in public -- a measure fiercely resisted by coffee shops fearing they'd take the biggest hit. The government quickly U-turned, bowing to pressure from the hotel and catering industry, and lifted the ban "indefinitely," giving the industry time to exhale. Marijuana retailers, always considered a separate sector, were quickly made exempt, and within days it was back to lighting up as usual.

While the uproar settled and coffee shops seemingly avoided extinction, their existence continues to be silently and systematically stubbed out. Those who flock to the Netherlands seeking its unique tourist niche may not know it, but new coffee shop licenses are rarely issued, and strict regulations have further curbed existing numbers. Closed shops go unreplaced, and the overall number continues to dwindle, dropping from 1,500 nationwide to roughly 737 today. Amsterdam, once the Wild West of the European drug trade, has 250 shops where it once had 800.

"You have to think three times about everything you do. It's getting worse every year," says Ferry Hansen, owner of Get A Life coffee shop in Amsterdam. Hansen, who has been in the business for 14 years, has seen government policies tighten as once vague laws, set in place for years, have become rigorously enforced. "The government is trying to control more and more. If you follow the law, they can't say anything, but in the long run, they'll probably get what they want."

Much of the push towards more stringent control can be attributed to the Christian Democrats (CDA), the most powerful party in the Dutch coalition government, which went on the offensive as soon as it won elections in 2002. Headed by Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, a devout Christian who blamed growing juvenile drug use on the cannabis industry -- even though the minimum legal age to enter a coffee shop is 18 -- the CDA immediately promoted a "zero option" on tolerance. "This is not a battle we're going to win overnight," Marcel Maer, a CDA spokesman told Britain's Sunday Times just days after the election. "But we will chip away at the coffee shops, greatly reducing their number over the next two years until hopefully we can get rid of them altogether."

Many of the regulations the government now enforces were actually established in 1996 in an effort to standardize the industry, which had developed from being reasonably discreet in the late 1970s to unrestrained in the late 1980s. It was then, at the height of ecstasy consumption, that a number of coffee shops peddled both hard and soft drugs, bucking the division of markets they purported to support. Bowing to international pressure, the Netherlands began restricting coffee shop numbers, working in tandem with the Bond van Cannabis Detaillisten, a union of organized coffee shop owners who agreed -- much to their commercial advantage -- that their numbers should be halved and remaining licenses be made nontransferable.

But it wasn't until the CDA tried to reign in coffee shops that these laws were heavily enforced. They include making it illegal to label lighters, rolling papers or display cannabis leaves -- all considered active advertising, limiting businesses to 500 grams of inventory, capping customer purchases to 5 grams per day, and banning businesses within 500 meters of a school. So if a new school pops up, the coffee shop can be closed without warning.

Additionally, in 2003 the BIBOB (an Act for the Promotion of Integrity Evaluations by Public Government) laws were introduced, targeting the entire service industry (including prostitutes) to prevent organized crime from getting involved. A special task force was created to enforce the laws by making random raids on coffee shops, "usually busting in like a bunch of cowboys," notes Hansen, to search staff and customers, and verify all of the required paperwork -- license, fire inspection records, chamber of commerce registration, rental contract, photocopied staff identification, and more. "If one side of this ID isn't photocopied, that's a fine and you're closed for a week," says Hansen, fingering an ID while flipping through a white folder as thick a telephone directory. "Make a second mistake, you're closed for two weeks. Make a third mistake, and you're closed permanently."

But while some owners balk at the government muscling in, others like Henry Dekker, owner of Republiek, Siberie and de Supermarkt coffee shops in Amsterdam, thinks regulations have formalized the market positively. "The government wants to clean it up so only the best businesses stay. This is a competitive market -- so if you're not good, no business," he says, rolling a hash joint as he speaks.

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Dara Colwell is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn.