Recent Blog Posts
-
The Era of the Renminbi Is at Hand
Nov 20 20092:55 pm EDT -
Computer Glitch Snarls Air Traffic
Nov 19 200910:29 am EDT -
Dollar Doldrums? What Dollar Doldrums?
Nov 19 20098:48 am EDT -
American Express Makes a Revolutionary Deal
Nov 18 200912:05 pm EDT -
Calpers Puts Pressure on Private Equity Funding and Fees
Nov 18 200910:27 am EDT -
Madoff Makes Millions (for Others)
Nov 18 20096:04 am EDT -
Lazard Looks Within Its Ranks for New Chief
Nov 17 20091:44 pm EDT -
A Brutal Morning for Geithner
Nov 17 20098:02 am EDT -
GM to Start Payback
Nov 16 20095:57 am EDT -
She Rules
Nov 13 200910:48 pm EDT
Going Dutch on Smoking
The Netherlands has a reputation for being a very liberal nation when it comes to social mores. But it does have a conformist Calvinist history.
That might explain the peculiarity of a new smoking ban that went into effect today. The Netherlands, like other European nations and many U.S. cities and states, now prohibits tobacco smoking in restaurants and bars.
The tobacco ban also applies to Dutch "coffee shops," where the buzz certainly does not come from the coffee. These are licensed establishments that since 1976 exist for smoking cannabis. The new law means that coffee shop customers can smoke marijuana and hashish, but not tobacco
"That sounds a bit to me like going into a cafe and being able to buy a beer without being able to drink it there. But the cafe still lets you drink whiskey, rum, and vodka," Paul Wilhelm, the owner of the De Tweede Kamer coffee shop in Amsterdam, told Der Spiegel.
That's a problem for the coffee shops, the Guardian reports, because most of their patrons prefer their joints mixed with tobacco. Only 18 percent take pure cannabis. As a result, some 1,600 coffee shops are said to be up for sale on fears that business will decline as a result.
The Dutch Health Minister, Ab Klink, has defended the new policy, saying, "A positive side effect of the smoking ban may be that consumers who spend the whole day hanging out in coffee shops will find other things to do."






