Comments on There Better Not Be Any Tobacco in That Joint, Kid...

Sounds like some of those "cafes" need to convert into "hookah bars".

These coffee shop complaints are total BS. Coffee shops could sell non-tobacco shake with their high end product to mix. Or they could produce less potent bud product to mix in. Obviously, the reason people mix with tobacco is they like the tobacco.

The weed you find in Amsterdam coffee shops is mostly for American tourists. The Europeans prefer hash, and hash must be mixed with something in order to roll a joint with it. Tobacco is that something.

I don't get it. Can't you bring glass pipes into these cafes and smoke only a reasonable amount? #2 is right, these complaints seem like BS.

@2, @4 - It's not an issue of smoking unreasonable amounts. Most of the coffee shops' business is people smoking joints made out of hash and tobacco.

For the most part, only North Americans smoke pot (and by pot, I mean green buds, not hash). I doubt that people are mixing pot with tobacco to dilute the pot.

When the article says cannabis, I'm pretty sure they mean hash.

man, i gotta move there one of these days

Just more whiners.

Everyone knows the best choice is special brownies made with high-end organic fair-trade ingredients and a nice coffee ....

I read this news more than a week ago, in this Bloomberg article (it gives a little more detail):

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aYnxvXq30UZs&refer=europe

As a frequent flyer in Amsterdam, I am very happy to see tobacco out of there. Snarky@2 is correct, in my non-humble opinion. Tobacco is a deadly addiction. Spliffs (the euro name for 'joints') are just tobacco with a bit of weed or hash put in.

They'll figure something out there. But I'm glad the tobacco is gone. Having seen both my parents suffer and die from the effects of tobacco, it gives me a brutal visceral reaction.

That said, go to Amsterdam in the off-season when the airfare is not nearly as bad, and the British barbarians are not so numerous in the shops. It's a great place to hang out.

Obviously a business model that includes the extremely addictive tobacco along with the cannabis is going to be hurt when the addictive portion is removed. So the "too strong" complaint seems like kind of a smokescreen -- as somebody else pointed out, how hard would it be to cut it with shake? A hash/dry leaf mix?

This is just the vendors worried about loss of sales. And of course people are always upset when their preferred buzz is curtailed, and a lot of European stoners are pretty into their tobacco/hash buzz.

hey, if i could smoke hash instead of buds, i'd do it in a flash - and then i'd be really really high & then i'd go to sleep. but i live in america. hash is hard to come by.

and amsterdam pot is so NOT too strong to smoke in joints. i smoked joints of "john sinclair" for 2 days straight. it's nowhere near the strength of BC "paranoia" bud.

In Australia, anyway, they smoke green bud mixed with tobacco and they really do have a super low tolerance to it. I finally got my own bag and rolled up a pure joint and all these regular smokers of the mix were laid out flat.

max @11 for the win.

Face it, they're just weenies.

I have to say I'm not real impressed with this "oh, it's OK, we're allowed to violate the smoking ban because it's weed". No smoking means NO SMOKING.

Who in the hell ruins perfectly good weed with yucky tobacco? Lame!

#14: So, if the rationale for the smoking ban is that second-hand smoke causes cancer, and there are no studies linking second-hand marijuana smoke to cancer, does it still make sense to include marijuana in the smoking ban? Does the ban extend to all substances that produce smoke when burned, or only to one particular type of substance (tobacco?)

The ban is only partly about second-hand smoke. It is also about being PROFOUNDLY IRRITATING. Tobacco smoke is extremely irritating, but so is pot smoke, and frankly so are pot smokers, particularly the kind who are likely to be found in an Amsterdam coffee shop -- the dreadlock-wearing, Bob-Marley-loving kind.

#17: Do you know of any studies regarding the long-term health effects of being profoundly irritated?

BTW, where do I have to go to buy weed? I have no one to buy from and it's now been a year and a half. I am not a cop!