What the Dutch Can Teach the World About Cannabis
As legalisation gathers pace, Simon Kuper heads to Amsterdam in search of answers
By Simon Kuper
When the FT told me to go and smoke pot in Amsterdam, I asked a friend there to recommend a good “coffeeshop” (Dutch-English for cannabis café). Her reply was very Dutch: “I’ve never been to one.” She chose the Paradox, the one nearest her son’s school, so that she could collect him afterwards.
Now we’re sitting in what feels like a cosy, cushion-strewn living room, surrounded by well-behaved, well-dressed, quiet twenty-somethings from around the world. The café’s owner, Ludo Bossaert, who opened the Paradox 27 years ago, recommends a €5 joint of “Pure Special Haze Mix”. According to the shop’s extensive menu, it will provide a “super high”. I become possibly the first person in the Paradox’s history to ask for a receipt.
Ludo — a passionate botanist, amateur narco-historian and sommelier of pot — instructs me to suck the joint before lighting it, to savour its sweet, faintly cinnamon taste. Then I start puffing. He gives me a double thumbs-up: “That’s what I call investigative journalism!”
Somebody had to do it, because cannabis is now a major public policy issue. On October 17, Canada became the first large…
