Tales of Amsterdam

Hello friends,

I was speaking with an old school buddy of mine, and he's living over in Amsterdam now (he's visiting for xMas). I was asking him about 20 questions per minute about everything.

I'd like to share with you some of the interesting things he told me:
-- In Amsterdam, you can grow whatever you want... max 5 plants per person, per household. Max of 20 plants per household. He went into a huge greenhouse where what the growers did was put the name of a person for every 5 plants... then they had hundreds of plants.
-- Although there's a max of 5/20 plants, the law has "brackets" for penalties. The first bracket is from 1 plant all the way up to 299. From 300 plants onward, you're in very deep shit. When he grew, that's what he did... 299 plants... although he told me 4 died.
-- You can grow indoors, outdoors, whatever you want. BUT! Growing with indoor lights is illegal. Lights are a no-no. Indoor growers go to great lengths to insulate their growrooms from the heat cameras.
-- Law enforcement is constantly flying over looking for hot-spots on houses.
-- Many growers dig a big hole in their yards, and burry a "container"... the big metal boxes used in freight shipping. Then, they have their grow rooms in there.
-- Another way law enforcement catches growers is that they periodically "shut down" a power grid section, then turn it back ON again... then they watch for which houses produce power spikes.
-- He told me that the most common way to get caught is by your neighborghs. He told me that most neighborghs are pesky SoBs.
-- You can be a super grower.... but over there, you're one of many others.
-- He worked for a company, and what he did was the trimmming. He tells me that the stink was so strong, that he had to change his clothes when he got on the train to go back to his home.
-- Amsterdam makes a difference between a "soft drug" and a "hard drug".
-- There's a couple of guys that people call "The Doctor". So, you arrange a meeting place, then the Dr gets blindfolded... then you drive him to your grow room... and then he goes on to tell you what you can improve, what you should change, what problems you have, etc. (nice job, eh?!)

Ummm, that's it for now... I just found it very interesting. I wanted to share with you guys.

Best,

-turtle420 :cool:

oh man, my sister was telling me a story from amsterdam she went for only a day, but the mourning she woke up there she opened her window to see the canals and there was a huge ass pink dildo in the windowsill. Oh and she bought a giant hookah for her friend and it was for "tobacco".

Very interesting turtle420, Thanks for posting it.

While in AMS I found a boat preservation club, run out of "Boom Chiago". For a donation of 10 EU. you get a hour and 1/2 to 2 hour canal tour.

The best part...it's a smoking/drinking cruse. I went two days in a row.

If you ran out of bud...they would stop....If you ran out of drink...they stop...bathroom?....they stop.

Check this when you go there

Peace

It's an old post but since I'm dutch, I would still like to comment :)

- A misconception is, that growing 5 plants is actually legal in Holland while it's not. Cannabis is still illegal to grow, smoke, possess. What we do have, is an arrangement where justice will not take legal action (but they COULD if they WANT technically) with a certain number of plants.

- The ranges are actually 1-5, 6-999, 1000+. !000+ will get you a nice pension/hotel with television etc for a couple of years. Anything below, you wil most likely get away with a fine. No judge will be impressed about having 1000+ plants divided up per 5 since it's still illegal.

- Grandscale growers will indeed do everything they can to avoid detection. Small growers with 1 or 2 lamps, will take care of the smell using filters but thats all. It's very hard to see the difference with a helicopter between a washdryer and a 400W HPS I'm being told.

- I've never heard or seen someone bury his room in the garden but it sounds like a nice solution :)

- Shutting down power grids, I wonder how that would help them find growers since most largescale growers steal electricity and secondly, the meters to measure how much electricity is used per household, are actually inside the houses. Still they may be able to figure it out. I've never heard about this before.

- Amsterdam mAND the Netherlands make a distinction between soft and harddrugs. All drugs are illegal, some drugs are tolerated. This has caused even more unjust laws than in more restrictive countries.

Examples:

Psilocybin is illegal, psilocybin mushrooms are illegal and considered harddrugs. Dried mushrooms are considered hard drugs which is completely crazy once you realize that when drying mushrooms, potency actually drops.

You are allowed to smoke weed, buy weed, possess weed (up untill a fixed amount), you are allowed to sell weed (as a coffeeshop, max 5 grams per customer per transaction) but......a coffeeshop is NOT allowed to BUY weed.

Some people believe, little gnomes supply all coffeeshops at night since the good stuff has to come from SOMEWHERE right ?
;)

- Cannabis use is not accepted in Holland. If you smoke cannabis, you are considered a lower life than the more educated people who limite their druguse to tobacco, coffee, sugar and alcohol. Most people keep silent about their cannabis consumption. Some people, like me, feel that keeping quite about it is having negative effects and we choose to be open about it.

- The doktor -> If you buy equipment from growshops and it fails, sometimes they will indeed send a specialist who will be blindfolded and taken to the growing space.

But believe me, Holland is great, I've lived in France for two years and learned all aspects of paranoia during that time ;)

Maybe I'm being stodgy in my old age, but I find it kind of... not cool that even though it's widely tolerated in Amsterdam, and pretty much "legalized" for all intents and purposes... people will still push the limit and continue to break laws on a wide scale. Honestly, I'm not looking down my nose at the large scale growers, but if I lived in a country that was on the cusp of legalising, and turning the other way for small grows, I would be following the law to the letter, in order to help hasten a full legalization.

Not that it would work, of course. I truley feel that if a country completely legalizes cannabis in all of its forms (posession, usage, sales, growing), then the governement should subsidize "real" farmers to grow it. Alot more revenue that way. I would love to see my taxes go down because our government is making money off of cannabis. When I think of the improvements that can be made schools and welfare programs alone... damn. That's alot of money a govt can take in.

Anyways... I really need to visit Amsterdam one day. It sounds like a hell of a place to see. Pink dildos and all. :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sabrinaleena

Maybe I'm being stodgy in my old age, but I find it kind of... not cool that even though it's widely tolerated in Amsterdam, and pretty much "legalized" for all intents and purposes... people will still push the limit and continue to break laws on a wide scale. Honestly, I'm not looking down my nose at the large scale growers, but if I lived in a country that was on the cusp of legalising, and turning the other way for small grows, I would be following the law to the letter, in order to help hasten a full legalization.

Not that it would work, of course. I truley feel that if a country completely legalizes cannabis in all of its forms (posession, usage, sales, growing), then the governement should subsidize "real" farmers to grow it. Alot more revenue that way. I would love to see my taxes go down because our government is making money off of cannabis. When I think of the improvements that can be made schools and welfare programs alone... damn. That's alot of money a govt can take in.

Anyways... I really need to visit Amsterdam one day. It sounds like a hell of a place to see. Pink dildos and all. :D

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Schools, I am 100% for. WELFARE needs MORE money?? Why ? For what ?
So we can continue to allow people to live off the government and be a liability to society and not an asset ? If Welfare dont pay someone enough, here is a great idea. GET A JOB!

b0nger

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bongerstonerd00d

Schools, I am 100% for. WELFARE needs MORE money?? Why ? For what ?
So we can continue to allow people to live off the government and be a liability to society and not an asset ? If Welfare dont pay someone enough, here is a great idea. GET A JOB!

b0nger

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I happen to agree with you on that. I'm not saying at all that MORE money should be given to welfare programs, I just want LESS of my money going towards them. But... cannabis will be made legal far sooner than welfare being abolished in my opinion. :P And if less of my taxes go towards people unwilling to use birth control and get a job, that's good then. ;)