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plant (which they call “marijuana” or “grass”). While each shop has
different brands, it's all derived from two types of marijuana plant:
Cannabis indica and Cannabis sativa . Indica gets you a “stoned,
heavy, mellow, couch-weed” high. Sativa is light, fun, “uplifting,”
and more psychedelic. Sativa makes you giggle.
Most of the pot you'll see is locally grown. Technological
advances have made it easier to cultivate exotic yet local strains.
Coffeeshops know it's much safer to deal with Dutch-grown
plants than to import marijuana from a foreign land (international
trafficking gives rise to a whole different level of legal complexity
than just growing your own). Most shops get their inventory from
the pot equivalent of local home-brewers or micro-brewers. Shops
with better “boutique suppliers” get the reputation for having bet-
ter quality weed (and regularly win the annual Cannabis Cup).
Each shop is allowed to keep an inventory of up to 500 grams
(about a pound) in stock—the tax authorities don't want to see more
than this on the topics at the end of each accounting cycle, and a shop
can lose its license if it exceeds this amount. However, the wholesale
dimension of the business is the famous “gray area” in the law: A shop
can sell a ton of pot with no legal problems, as long as it maintains
that tiny stock of 500 grams and just refills it as needed. The mayor of
Amsterdam, seeking to cut down on the high volume of small-time
deliveries, has proposed doubling the allowable inventory level (to one
kilo). The reason the inventory level is kept so low: Authorities want
shops to stay small and not become bases for exportation. Providing
pot to neighboring countries would bring more international pressure
on the Netherlands to crack down on its coffeeshop culture.
The other legal trend is that licenses are not being renewed in
some neighborhoods, as the city seeks to maintain a wide smat-
tering of shops, avoiding too big a concentration in any one area.
A national law which goes into effect in 2011 would close all cof-
feeshops near schools, including the landmark Bulldog Café on
Liedseplein. But Amsterdam's mayor has vowed to look for a way to
keep its central coffeeshops open. Stay tuned.
So what am I? Pro-marijuana? Let's put it this way: I agree with
the Dutch people, who remind me that a society either has to allow
alternative lifestyles...or build more prisons. As many as 800,000
Americans are arrested for marijuana use in one year alone. (Only
the US and Russia lock up more than 1 percent of their citizens.)
The Dutch are not necessarily pro-marijuana, but they do
believe that a prohibition on marijuana would cause more problems
than it solves. Statistics support the Dutch belief that their system
works. They have fewer hard drug problems than other countries.
And they believe America's policy is based on fear, misinforma-
tion, and electoral politics, rather than rationality. The Dutch have
found that their drug policy, with its 10-year track record, does not
 
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