Part 6: Conclusions

Let’s dispense with any suspense over which nation is going to win the secondary competition: all those windmills, wind turbines, orchards, canals, tiny refrigerators, bicycles, Smart cars, public transportation, minimal pesticides and line-dried clothes make The Netherlands our runaway winner in Green Thinking.

But what about Green Economics, as in which nation’s socioeconomic soil is more fertile for cannabis commerce?

You’ll recall that last post I was still processing the possibility that conditions for cannabis commerce could actually be more favorable in my own backyard, Boulder/Denver USA, than they are in the NL — despite the NL’s widespread reputation that it’s the most cannabis-friendly place on earth.

But now the time to think is over. The time to duke it out has come. This will be a 13-round slugfest. Each of the main factors is a round in a championship fight. In the orange corner, the NL, the current titleholder: can it hold off the US? And in the red, white and blue corner, the stars and stripes. Can the upstarts from the USA usurp the crown? The crowd is working itself into a frenzy. The tension is building to a fever pitch. Are you ready to rumble?

And here’s the bell!

Round 1 — Try where you buy — Advantage NL

At coffee shops “over there,” you can smoke on site, roll yourself some herbal releaf, chill, have a cappuccino, listen to music, dance, converse with like-minded individuals, and otherwise act “civilized” in a savage world.

When the stars align — like when the Cannabis Cup comes to a  couple of lucky cities one weekend a year — US “stoners” can smoke their brains out with their buddies. That’s 2½ days a year in one town vs. 365 days a year in an entire country

That’s a HUGE advantage for the NL. From a quality of life standpoint, this category is absolutely vital. Which is why it counts double.

Our score: NL 2, US 0.

Round 2 — OK to smoke in public places — Advantage NL

It’s true that NL stoners can get away with smoking in public places within reason. Here’s another category that’s so important it counts double. However, recent displays of public stoniness are hurting the NL’s future prospects. Certain cannabis tourists (almost always the ones who who’ve had ten beers) misbehave so badly in public places that the citizenry has had it with them and their antics. That makes cannabis tourism vulnerable to the ruthless Christian Democrat Party and its fervent desire to stamp out everything cannabis.

But it hasn’t happened as of this writing, so it’s another HUGE edge for the soggy monarachy.

The ability to try where you buy and the ability to fire up in public places is a tough combination to beat. The NL is certainly looking strong in the early going. Let’s see if the US can withstand these early blows and come back.

Our score: NL 4, US 0.

Round 3 — Entirely illegal vs. quasi-legal — Advantage US

Cannabis is entirely illegal in the NL!

Read it again and weep: cannabis in the NL is entirely illegal.

It’s not even quasi-legal like the crippled medical marijuana regulations in some US states.

Try to wrap your head around this: in the NL, you can’t officially grow it, buy it, or sell it — yet any number of coffee houses exchange eurobuds for euros every day of the week.

Huh?

That proverbial “enigma wrapped in a riddle” is even more unfathomable than the current situation in the US: medical marijuana is “legal” according to state law in MMJ states, while it remains entirely illegal in every state according to federal law.

I’ve pointed out the economic limitations quasi-legalization imposes — it constrains cannabis commerce to maybe five percent of the jobs, cannatax, and contribution to Gross Domestic Product it could produce in a fully legal and regulated landscape.

Yet, measured by any standard, the situation in the NL is even more hypocritical than the USA’s edgy, dichotomous détente.

The US gets on the scoreboard.

Our score: NL 4, US 1.

Round 4 — The back door problem — Advantage US

That hypocrisy comes home to roost as “the back door problem;” since cannabis is illegal, coffee shops can’t grow their own stock. The once-permissive government hounds growers in every city and hamlet. That places coffee shops at the mercy of the only supplier bold enough to buck the countrywide crackdown: organized crime.

This head-scratching situation causes quality control issues.

In the US, dispensaries [aka collectives, clubs, co-ops, care centers] take pride in their grows. The State of Colorado actually requires dispensaries to grow 70% of what they sell. When I first heard that regulation was coming down the pike, it seemed Big Brotherish. Then I witnessed the NL’s “system.” Now it appears the Colorado Department of Revenue had method to its madness.

If you can’t outgrow the competition, and you can’t grow control quality, potency, or appearance, you’re dependent upon your suppliers doing it for you.

That’s hardly an ideal situation..

The US takes another round.

Our score: NL 4, US 2.

The NL’s advantages over the US are falling fast.

Round 5 — Quantity restrictions — Advantage US

NL residents can only buy five grams at a time; medical marijuana cardholders can buy fifty-six grams [2 ounces] in Colorado, USA. That’s a clear advantage, since it’s ten times as much — even though both amounts are silly-low in countries where anyone can pull a semi up to a liquor store, fill it up, then drive off and party hearty until comets crash into the Earth — putting humankind’s bungling attempts to regulate a roadside weed to rest.

You may be wondering how a country can set a five gram limit on an illegal substance? And you were hoping the trusted experts at Cannabis Commerce could explain that for you? Don’t even ask …

The US is chipping away at the NL’s early lead.

Our score: NL 4, US 3.

Round 6 — Best buying experience at a coffee shop or dispensary — Advantage US

• Ready-to-rumble bouncer types are stationed outside the entrances to most Amsterdam coffee shops. One has to assume there’s good reason toughs are standing guard. Their presence doesn’t exactly inspire feelings of safety and reliability. Quite the contrary. While some US dispensaries employ guards, they look more like pussycats than KGB operatives.
• Instead of providing a safe haven from sin twins alcohol and tobacco, many, if not most coffee shops in the NL sell them alongside buds and edibles. If you’ve picked the “wrong” coffee shop — one which sells alcohol, too — you’ll soon find yourself surrounded by suds-guzzling cannabis tourists hailing from countries that take great pride in their drinking prowess. England and Germany spring to mind. In all likelihood, you’re also likely to find yourself enveloped in a haze of tobacco smoke; rolling with tobacco is what they do in Europe. Ouch!
• Some folks like adulterating their “medicine” with tobacco with about as much as they’d like taking it with a tear gas chaser. To be fair, Europeans generally roll with pure tobacco that isn’t saturated with toxic chemicals. I could laugh off rolling with tobacco, chalking it up to a difference in philosophies … if alcohol wasn’t in the mix, too. That’s one vice too many for this kid. However, what I experience as “contamination” other patrons view as “convenience,” as in “one-stop shopping.” I’m speaking only for myself when I tell you that rubbing shoulders in a pot shop with a band of besotted tourists soldiering through their tenth pint for dear old England isn’t exactly my cup of tea.
• Even though I’m one of the most outspoken critics of US-style medical marijuana (I’d drop the adjective and embrace recreational and industrial use, too), I have to admit that the therapeutic vibe which characterizes the US scene provides a purer user experience than the NL’s let’s-get-baked-on-three-vices-at-once variation.

The US wins its fourth round in a row to draw even with the heavily-favored NL.

Our score: NL 4, US 4.

If the author was scouting locations for a coffee shop, he’d opt for a storefront with Egyptianesque frescoes like this one.

Round 7 — Tolerance — Advantage US

• The average American who doesn’t partake seems way more tolerant of people who do than the average “Dutch” person —at least in my orbits, which admittedly don’t include the southern bible belt. Mentioning that I write about cannabis was a guaranteed conversation-stopper in the NL. In the US, dropping that information usually elevates the conversation.
• Netherlanders have a hard time believing that anyone “uses” cannabis in moderation. That’s because zonked out compatriots and cannabis tourists wander the streets high on combinations of pot and alcohol, pot and heroin, or pot, alcohol, and heroin.
• That’s a real turn-off for a populace indoctrinated at an early age that drinking domestic brews like Heineken, Grolsch, and Amstel is the height of patriotism while smoking cannabis, which originated in f**king Afghanistan or wherever, is a foreign vice exported by a satanic entities with horns and tails.

Talking about pot makes folks in The Netherlands a little sheepish.

• NL teens are schooled to consume their fair share of suds at an early age. What other conclusion can be drawn when the national drinking age is 16? Netherlanders have to be 18 to purchase cannabis [even though, again, it’s illegal]. That pretty much says it all right there.
• In the NL, even proponents label cannabis a “drug.” They may temper that with the adjective “soft.” Hmm. Even former California governor Ah-nold Schwarzengger is on the record stating, “that’s a leaf, not a drug.”
• Without exceptions, opponents insist cannabis is a soft drug with the same certainty that Coke is a soft drink. I was really expecting a more accepting cannaculture. Reality didn’t jibe with those expectations.

The US takes Round 7, inching ahead.

Our score: US 5, NL 4.

Round 8 — Best Dramatic Roles — Advantage US

In the US, persons in reasonable health who transact at dispensaries must nonetheless play the role of “patients” and converse exclusively in Patientese to get served. In the same vein, dispensary personnel perform the roles of nurses, physicians and pharmacists. Who said theater is dead?

In the NL, no one has to try on a new personna, purchase state certification that they’re sick or dying, or pretend that they’re a registered nurse to complete a simple retail pot transaction. It’s okay for marijuana to be more than a medicine. Recreational use is perfectly acceptable.

In the US, we have to stomach holier-than thou rants like, “We thought we voted to allow medical marijuana sales to save the sick and dying; so isn’t it deplorable that people take advantage of the system by making money selling medical marijuana?”

Medical schmedical. The absurd amount of play-acting it takes to buy a handful of buds wins this category for the US — and loses a point in the process because the less make believe the better the climate for cannabis commerce. It pays to be careful what you win.

The NL draws back level.

Our score: US 5, NL 5.

Round 9 — Most apathy — Advantage NL

The NL is even more apathetic about displays of civil disobedience demanding herbal rights than the US.

Hardly anyone in the NL knew what 420 [public gatherings where herbal rights proponents light up en masse on April 20 at 4:20 in the afternoon] is. Peoples’ eyes popped out of their heads when they saw Cannabis Commerce’s videos of 420@CUBoulder. During my visit, a “big” gathering, Cannabis Liberation Day, was held in Amsterdam. It was held to “save our cannabis culture” [from the clutches of the Christian Democratic Party’s determination to stamp it out].

Instead of the projected 20,000 people huddled shoulder to shoulder, inhaling as one organism which I witnessed in Boulder, I saw a few hundred stragglers scattered over an expanse that could have held a hundred  times more. What there was of the crowd seemed more intent on getting obliterated than preserving cannabis culture for future generations. It would appear that The Netherlands “movement” is also lacking a galvanizing Martin Luther King-type figure who can work a crowd (I’m amazed no cannabis messiah has emerged in either country, but I digress).

The NL wins the apathy competition —  one it would have been better off losing; it’s like scoring an “own goal.”

The point goes to the US, which retakes the lead.

Our score: US 6, NL 5.

Tourist attractions not mentioned in the guidebooks: an inflatable Statue of Liberty and a Cannabis Film Festival held inside a yurt.

Round 10 — Most “stoners” who act like hooligans — Advantage NL

Just as the average “soccer” fan in the NL has more “hooligan” potential than the average football fan in the US, the average “stoner” in the NL just has a harder look to them than the average stoner in the US. Underneath the rough exteriors, those Dutch toughs could be the nicest folks in the world. Then again, they could be what they appear to be — highly capable of mayhem. Some of them sure look like the same drunken maniacs I watched hurling smoke bombs onto the field, interrupting a “soccer” game between Ajax and Twente for the Dutch Cup trophy. But I don’t know everything. I could be wrong.

Here’s another category where winning means losing. Again, the point goes to the US. Could there be an upset brewing in the home of Heineken?

Our score US 7, NL 5.

Round 11 — Quality and pricing — Advantage neither

Regarding quality and pricing, there’s very little difference between the countries. Whatever advantages the NL held in quality and pricing have long since vanished.

The NL may still have a slight advantage in the quality and variety of seeds on offer, but even this lead is eroding. It’s a veritable strainarama in hotbeds like Denver, where on any given day you can purchase hundreds of varieties that were unobtainable till dispensaries began appearing in 2010. The US may have an edge in outdoor buds grown in the fertile Emerald Triangle of Northern California. But the NL is hardly hurting for great buds.

Or course, price advantages differ depending on whether you’re viewing them from the buyer’s or the seller’s perspective. Prices seem to be dropping all the time in Denver. They’re often a third of what they were two years ago for similar, if not better quality.

This category is too close to call. Therefore, each country is awarded a half-point.

Our score US 7½, NL 5½.

Round 12 — Cannabis Tourism — Advantage NL

Cannabis tourism is a subject dear to our hearts. Who wouldn’t want to wake up at Bob’s Bong and Breakfast?

People talk about various areas of the US like Denver, the Bay Area, and the Emerald Triangle becoming destinations for cannabis tourism … if they’re not there already. That said, fifteen out of sixteen US MMJ states will only sell to residents of that state. That puts a damper on it. On the other hand, there’s upward pressure for this situation to improve, though that’s bound to take some time.

Conversely, the Netherlands, which invented cannabis tourism and has been profiting handsomely from it since the 70’s, currently has legislation pending to repeal it. If cannabis tourism is outlawed in the NL — and it’s already been banned near border crossings — only persons carrying Netherlands passports will be able to transact at coffee shops. The natives speak about this legislation passing as a foregone conclusion.

But it hasn’t passed yet, so chalk one up for the NL. With only one round left, this heated competition is coming right down to the wire.

Our score US 7½, NL 6½.

The splendor of grass.

Round 13 — Nation with the most dire economic need to legalize — advantage US

Incentives for legalizing cannabis in the NL are next to nonexistent compared to what the economy is pleading for in the US.

Unlike, say, fellow European Union members Greece and Ireland, the tiny monarchy is astonishingly flush in tremendously insolvent times. That means that forces driving the push for legalization in the US — the national debt racing past the $14 trillion mark, along with numerous areas experiencing ten percent or greater unemployment — are absent in the NL.

That leads to an inescapable conclusion: The NL doesn’t need the cannatax.

People gladly pay up to 50% taxes, double the rate in the US. Basically, everyone who wants one a job already has one. Add to that the ascendancy of the Christian Democratic party, with its stated intention to stamp out stoners like rats in a grain bin … and the economic justification for legalization in the NL starts to look as bleak as the background in a Rembrandt portrait.

We have a final — and the US takes it! Do you believe in miracles?

Our final score: US 8½, NL 6½.

In 2011, the grass is greener in the United States

The results are in, and we have an upset winner! Despite lingering hype that the NL is the same pot Mecca it’s been since the 70’s, the present climate in the US is actually more favorable. There’s a new Holy Land. Therefore, Cannabis Commerce’s first annual Jolly Green Giant trophy is awarded to the US, the imperialistic colossus little country that could!

The first annual Jolly Green Giant Award goes to The United States of America in a tremendous upset.

Dear readers, when you’re exposed to medical marijuana’s bitter aftertaste on a daily basis, as I am, it’s human nature to assume that the grass has to be greener somewhere else. I anticipated discovering and describing the viridian splendor of a better, brighter land whose initials are “NL.”

The fact that expectations didn’t jibe with reality is just the way it is, baby.

I’m just as shocked at the final tally as you are.

I can see how someone reading this post could think my trip to the NL was a big disappointment.

Nothing could be further from the truth. It was an epic trip, one which left me with greater appreciation for my local scene that I had before.