What Will My Grow Room Smell Like?

The City Council Can Help!

30,000 cannabis-scented cards have been distributed to residents of Den Haag and Rotterdam by their city councils. This disturbing plan aims to help people recognize the smell of grow rooms and report on their neighbours.

We have very little confidence that asking people to rat on their neighbor will actually improve the standard of living in any given city. Luckily this plan is doomed from the start as the cards smell as much like weed as Magic Tree air fresheners smell like an actual pine forest.

For people who already know what a grow room smells like, here are a few suggestions of other things that can be done with a card that smells of cannabis:

1. Hang it from the rear view mirror of your car. If the police ask why your car smells of marijuana, simply point at it and smile.
2. Emergency deodorant. Rub armpits quickly while no-one is looking.
3. Take it to a festival- your tent will smell fantastic, attract new friends, and be easy to find in the dark (it’s the one that smells like a grow room).

Cannabis tax in California would generate 1.2 Bil.$ a year!

California — Here’s a sure sign that  marijuana dispensaries are on their way to becoming big business: On July 13 the city council of Berkeley, Calif., asked voters to approve a 2.5 percent tax on the city’s  marijuana outlets, three of which grossed a total of $19 million last year, all cash. “This is huge,” says Mayor Tom Bates.

A dispensary in Oakland, Ca.

The tax will not only help close a $16.2 million budget gap, but it also makes sure that as the sale of pot goes mass market, the local community benefits, not outside business interests, Bates says. “We don’t want to have Philip Morris coming in here, sucking up all the money.”

Taxing pot sales is a growing trend across the nation as fiscally challenged cities eye the public’s budding acceptance of cannabis use. Denver has generated $1.2 million since December, when the city began collecting sales taxes from its 256 dispensaries. On June 15, Washington, D.C., approved a 6 percent tax on what will eventually be five dispensaries.

The Dutch Cannabis-selling Cafes

The people over at norml.org have posted a very interesting article on their blog. It starts of with the following quote.

“Coffee Shops Will Disappear Within Two Years… The Netherlands Can’t Continue To Tolerate Existence of Coffee Shops Because Of International Opposition.”

– Henk van de Bunt, Professor of Criminology at Erasmus University (Radio Netherlands, Nov. 10, 2008)

We would like to add to this statement that the Dutch have had international pressure for years on this topic, the real factor is the way the current government chooses to deal with this pressure. It is true that the decriminalisation policy in the Netherlands is hard to sell internationally, but we don’t we understand why. The level of soft- and harddrugs users is very low in the Netherlands compared to other countries, so obviously the policy works, although it is not perfect. There are some forces in the Dutch governement that seem to be determined to get rid of the coffeeshops alltogether.

The rest of the article on norml.org goes as follows:

In the last few weeks, NORML has received numerous inquiries from international and American media, and concerned NORML members, regarding the current and future legal status of The Netherlands’ tolerant and pragmatic cannabis policies. Recent news headlines have concentrated on minority Dutch parties and academics (many of whom have historically opposed the ‘coffee shop’ model) that have been able to persuade coalition government parties (who favor cannabis tolerance) in making two small concessions on where cannabis-selling cafes can be located in the country:

*43 of 228 cannabis-selling cafes in the city of Amsterdam will have to close by the end of 2011 because they are located less than 275 yards from a secondary school. One of the unfortunate victims of this political and zoning concession is the famous Bulldog Café on the Leidseplein.

*In the border city of Maastricht, in an effort to assuage neighboring countries, the city council has voted to remove coffee shops from the center city area (however, allowing them in the suburbs and neighborhoods).

Read the rest of the article.