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Elections: Let’s pick up the pieces…
The cannabis lover in Holland had some difficult 4 years with the last government. But after each 4 years, there comes another 4 years. So a new round, another chance... Will we get a new green breeze through this country in the upcoming 4 years? Let’s pick up the pieces…
I’m not going to explain how the Dutch political system and the elections exactly work. Hell no. I don’t even understand it myself. But the elections are over and in the end that always means that 2 or 3 different parties are condemned to each other to rule this nation for the upcoming 4 years.
The result of the last election is a new government which exists out of 3 parties: the CDA (Christian Democrats), the PvdA (Laborparty) and the CU (another christian party). The charisma of the parties was personalized in the following characters:
Yes, those are our leaders these days. In Holland most of us only know them by their nicknames: Harry Potter, Wouter Weathervane and…, well, just Andre.
The Dutch Drugpolicy with its coffeeshops has always been an irritating phenomenon for other countries. Because of this The Netherlands have been under attack many times. So every election there’s the danger of a new government who will surrender for this pressure. And what is our new government going to do? I’m afraid to answer... Especially the CDA and the CU are very conservative parties and I fear a difficult time ahead of us. They might just throw us back into the fifties, including making life more difficult for us; friendly smokers.
In the ‘manifest’ of the new government cannabis seems to be no big issue. At least at first sight. May we clap our hands now? Hits from the Bong straightaway? Well… there seems to be one, maybe two little thingies. First, they will forbid coffeeshops which are located within a distance of 500 meters from a school. How are you going to do that in a crowded city as Amsterdam with so many schools and so many coffeeshops? Many coffeeshops will have to go somehow. Second, what about that complete ban on smoking in public areas? Will that be applied to coffeeshops too? This all smells dirty. It looks like they can’t make cannabis and coffeeshops completely illegal, so they follow the policy of: ‘make it as difficult as possible for them and they will disappear by themselves’.
Nobody knows yet what the exact results will be, but it definitely means we will get some 4 more difficult years. After more then 20 fine years of tolerance; do we really have to stand up again and go into the frontline to fight for our rights?
In the seventies we made a huge step with our ‘Policy of Tolerance’ against cannabis. We have to take our next step towards complete legalization. Maybe we will take our chance in a new round in 2010…
Bum Shankar!
The Daily Smoker
February, 2007