Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How smoking weed is still legal for tourists in Amsterdam

travel.stackexchange.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 72 posts

Re: How smoking weed is still legal for tourists in Amsterdam

#61

Post by Zenst »

bane wrote: post #60
bowlofpetunias wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have become very anti-EU in recent years. I am very much pro open borders with neighboring nations, but the EU has become a vehicle for creating a fundamentally undemocratic centralized federal state. And I especially detest the way the EU tries to shift the balance of power by allowing impoverished, corrupt nations into the EU without any kind of democratic process. In the Netherlands, there is a clear majority ag…

You know, as an American, it's interesting to see how the EU experiment plays out. Many of these issues have parallels to the American federal vs. state's rights debates. Early on, the U.S. was much more individual state-centric. Outside of slavery, the American civil war was largely about individual Southern states keeping their local rights vs. a more federal North. Over time the major political parties have largel…

A very interesting and valid comparision between the EU and the American states.

What seperates them is that America is a defined country with the states already there and the EU model seems to be about borging anybody nearby who wants to sign up, least these days. Almost akin to office politics empire building. Then the whole cultural aspect as you rightly put it is maybe more varied than what the States have to accomodate. Could even look at language barriers on that one as a definition of cultural divides. Fact esperanto has not taken off would also indicate the types of issues any one rule fits all approach takes as being flawed.

It is also worth noting that the States has/does have a bit of a North/South divide and that is true of many countries and with that I see the whole EU evolving into a formal two-tier system in some form as the current expansion/change rate is not sustainable without many negative side effects.

Bit like developing on a green feild or upgrading existing buildings the end result and ideals are often two seperate results even if sold as being the same in the budgeting/planning.

Re: How smoking weed is still legal for tourists in Amsterdam

#62

Post by Crito »

malka wrote: post #51
chimeracoder wrote: post #44

Good explanation, but this title is incredibly misleading. Marijuana was never legal in the Netherlands[0], for tourists or residents. As the linked answer itself points out, it was only tolerated. Until November 2012, there was no place in the world where marijuana was truly legal, except (possibly) North Korea[1]. Even still, it's a stretch to say that marijuana is legal in Washington State and Colorado, since the…

US strategy : -Make weed illegal in the entire world -Legalize weed -??? -Profit !

That is an amusingly cynical way of looking at it, but of course the reality is that there is not a single cohesive US strategy.

Re: How smoking weed is still legal for tourists in Amsterdam

#63

Post by Crito »

pstuart wrote: post #56
malka wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah ah, in France, we kinda had the same problem with the eu 'constitution'. the referendum result was 'no'. So, the name was changed, and it was voted by the parliament. Democracy at its finest. never bothered to vote since.

It's important to vote if only to make a statement that you care about the issue. Your silence is a vote of approval for the politicians to do whatever they want (of course they pretty much do already, but one should never implicitly vote for that).

Any vote is a vote signaling confidence and continued support of the democratic system.

If you no longer believe that your system is democratic, then you should not legitimize it by playing along with it.

Re: How smoking weed is still legal for tourists in Amsterdam

#64

Post by bunderbunder »

bane wrote: post #60
bowlofpetunias wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have become very anti-EU in recent years. I am very much pro open borders with neighboring nations, but the EU has become a vehicle for creating a fundamentally undemocratic centralized federal state. And I especially detest the way the EU tries to shift the balance of power by allowing impoverished, corrupt nations into the EU without any kind of democratic process. In the Netherlands, there is a clear majority ag…

You know, as an American, it's interesting to see how the EU experiment plays out. Many of these issues have parallels to the American federal vs. state's rights debates. Early on, the U.S. was much more individual state-centric. Outside of slavery, the American civil war was largely about individual Southern states keeping their local rights vs. a more federal North. Over time the major political parties have largel…

> Over time the major political parties have largely separated on this issue with the American Left more federal and the Right more interested in state rights.

My perception has been that they're both extremely federal about some things, and extremely anti-federal about others. To take an example of Republicans taking the federal side and Democrats taking the more subsidiary side of an issue, about 10 years back there was an interesting point in Wisconsin state politics where municipalities were starting to enact bans on smoking in taverns, and some folks in the state legislature responded by attempting to enact a statewide ban on smoking bans.

Of course, smoking in bars still became illegal statewide about 3 years ago. . . which I think illustrates the real guiding principle in American politics, which is political pragmatism: Election season politicking (read: dishonesty) aside, neither party truly takes a principled stance on the big government issue. In practice, they freely flip-flop between pushing big-government policies and stumping for smaller governments' right to be free from meddling depending on which approach better suits their goals in a particular situation.

To take another example, the two main parties' relative opinions on the desirability of using great heaping piles of taxpayer money to fund government programs in order to create jobs does this sudden, dramatic and complete inversion when the topic of military contractors gets raised.

Re: How smoking weed is still legal for tourists in Amsterdam

#65

Post by Crito »

adobriyan wrote: post #35
70forty wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I stand by what I said. It's tough to find statistics but the article below says that between 1993 and 2006, 23 deaths were tied to ketamine use. That to me qualifies as safe and relatively non-addictive in the context of recreational drug use. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/ketamine-tops... Oh yeah, and banning discussion of recreational drug use will do wonders for harm reduction, lol.

> 23 deaths were tied to ketamine use. some future ketamine deaths are on you, 70forty

Quit being so melodramatic. 23 deaths in over a decade is a rounding error.

Re: How smoking weed is still legal for tourists in Amsterdam

#66

Post by malka »

Crito wrote: post #62
malka wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US strategy : -Make weed illegal in the entire world -Legalize weed -??? -Profit !

That is an amusingly cynical way of looking at it, but of course the reality is that there is not a single cohesive US strategy.

My comment was to be taken as a joke ;) Given how the federal state give a hard time to coffee shop in california, colorado, etc. I'm pretty sure they did not plan it this way. However, as an external observator, it is funny to see that things went this way.

Re: How smoking weed is still legal for tourists in Amsterdam

#67

Post by bane »

bunderbunder wrote: post #64
bane wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, as an American, it's interesting to see how the EU experiment plays out. Many of these issues have parallels to the American federal vs. state's rights debates. Early on, the U.S. was much more individual state-centric. Outside of slavery, the American civil war was largely about individual Southern states keeping their local rights vs. a more federal North. Over time the major political parties have largel…

> Over time the major political parties have largely separated on this issue with the American Left more federal and the Right more interested in state rights. My perception has been that they're both extremely federal about some things, and extremely anti-federal about others. To take an example of Republicans taking the federal side and Democrats taking the more subsidiary side of an issue, about 10 years back ther…

That's also true. Different people have differing opinions about what should be national policy vs. state policy, and it can actually be counter-intuitive/paradoxical until you really look into it.

For example, most American conservatives favor strong national defense, but minority pockets of conservative areas are strongly anti-federal and favor local militias. It seems odd, but you'll find that most of that bent veer that way from both the Constitutional right to bear arms in a well regulated militia (unspecified as to who regulates it, but that's a small technical quibble), combined with an American leeriness about government (that the same amendment seems to voice) and you can kind of see how that kind of thing arises.

And there's similar sentiments all over the political spectrum.

As an American, the E.U. looks similar in this respect. Politics are tied up in originator theories (the E.U. was meant for xxx) and a European nation vs. local nationalism. With Europe being perceived as being very liberal from an American perspective, it's interesting to see politics that would be framed here as extreme conservatism as part of the normal modern European political debate and it's a good lesson that not everybody is wholly liberal or conservative on all issues.

As to what I support, this current overly complicated system, of overlapping but non-equal areas of trade, borders and monetary systems (the EEA, EU, ESDP, EFTA, EuroZone, Schengen, and on and on and on) seems unsustainable in the long-term.

It simply makes more sense to say "if you're in Europe, you are part of the EU which implies you are part of common defense, common trade, common monetary policy and so and so forth" and not worry about which part of the venn diagram a particular nation is. My prediction is that this will happen within the next 50 years. And 50 years after than everybody will look back and wonder what all the fuss was about.

From an outsider's perspective, Europe today is better than Europe was even just a couple decades ago and I think it's largely due to this unification movement. Having a larger government override local concerns seems particularly difficult for Europeans right now, but as an American we're quite used to it and find it generally tolerable.

As a frequent visitor to Europe over the last few decades, I enjoy the more unified Europe more, it's just easier to get around and do things, even if some of the local flavor has been lost (I used to love collecting all the various currencies, now it's just Euros, bleh).

Re: How smoking weed is still legal for tourists in Amsterdam

#68

Post by andreasvc »

70forty wrote: post #25
adobriyan wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any reasonable public forum will flat out ban any drug discussions because of experts like 70forty who tell kids it is safe.

And I stand by what I said. It's tough to find statistics but the article below says that between 1993 and 2006, 23 deaths were tied to ketamine use. That to me qualifies as safe and relatively non-addictive in the context of recreational drug use. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/ketamine-tops... Oh yeah, and banning discussion of recreational drug use will do wonders for harm reduction, lol.

That's not a good criteria for safety at all (and the conclusion of non-addictiveness is totally unwarranted by the number of deaths). Lots of chemicals are damaging without killing you: lowering your IQ, organ damage, etc.

Re: How smoking weed is still legal for tourists in Amsterdam

#69

Post by andreasvc »

_delirium wrote: post #15
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #8

There's a lot of laws like this that don't get enforced as much as 'law' would imply. Another example is the ban on smoking in workplaces to protect the employees; in the Netherlands, a couple of years ago, this law was implemented, meaning that smoking was effectively banned from bars and pubs as well. Outrage ensued from all sides. Two 'workarounds' were created: * People just donate to the pub owner to pay the fin…

Interesting, is smoking still common in bars in the Netherlands? That's one of the laws that actually is pretty widely followed in other countries. One of the more surprising was that in a period of about 3 years, Greek bars and nightclubs went from being 100% smoke-filled to being essentially smoke-free.

In my experience many bars do adhere to the ban, but there are exceptions where the ashtrays are on the tables in plain sight. If they get caught x number of times they have to close down though.

Re: How smoking weed is still legal for tourists in Amsterdam

#70

Post by nicholassmith »

diydsp wrote: post #54
nicholassmith wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't sound like ketamine completely. Whilst it'll zombify you pretty quickly, it won't prevent you from passing out from other drugs as you can 'k-hole' on it pretty quickly and pass out. Butorphanol is what seems more likely from a bit of internet sleuthing (but I imagine it'll have a more jazzy name in the club).

http://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Pharms_Butorphano... Interesting. It's not available from the front page of erowid, so it must be somewhat new. It doesn't appear to have an interesting street name from this handful of reports. At least its prescription, so it's not some god-awful thing, but it is an opiate, so somewhat dangerous.

It sounds pretty new, my google search didn't have links to human use newer than about 2/3 years ago.
Post reply on HN