Dutch hypocrite drug laws summarized…

So here is what is legal and what is not:

Legal:

• Possession up to 5 grams
•  ”Coffee shops” can possess up to 500 gram.
• Smoking, both in your house and outside. If you want you can smoke on the police’s doorstep.

Illegal:

• Growing (!). Well, you can grow up to 5 plants. But 5 plants is not going to be enough  supply for a coffee shop obviously. Therefore criminals grow hundreds of plants secretly inside homes. (The weather does not allow outside growing) And since there is risk involved (a substantial part of home fires in the Netherlands is due to illegal growing) the police actively chases for these growers.

And yes that is hypocritical. :) But according to our PM the EU does not allow legalizing growing also. According to everyone in the opposition they don’t allow smoking either, but since the Dutch have managed to get away with that, they can get away with growing also. Advantages would be: constant quality checks by the health and safety department, cheaper product, and no more sketchy coffee shops poisoning tobacco with LSD and selling it as marijuana to unknowing tourists who account for 90% of the Dutch drug sales anyway.

So far  the serious side. The funny part you can see here, the police clearing out an illegal growing in central Amsterdam, very close to the famous Bulldog coffee shop who is selling weed legally. It’s Dutch hypocrisy at its best. And a total waste of police resources, since the growing will move to another house the next day anyway. But that is just my humble opinion. :)