For the Netherlands' famous network of cannabis-peddling coffee
shops the high times could be about to be stubbed out - for good.

A tough new anti-smoking law due to take effect from January of next
year is about to turn the Dutch work place into a smoke-free zone
and coffee shops are not exempted.

Under the new law every company in the country must ensure that
their employees are not exposed to tobacco smoke. Lighting up a
joint in one of 800 coffee shops therefore faces extinction from
2005.

Coffee shops will still be allowed to sell joints but their
customers will have to go outside to smoke. Unsurprisingly the
country's marijuana retailers are not pleased. "We might as well
just shut up shop," Dick Langereis, the manager of two Amsterdam
coffee shops, told the daily Trouw. "Just let them try and enforce
this in the Hague," added a man called Gilbert who runs a coffee
shop in the city of Nijmegen.

[snip]

Pubdate: Thu, 29 May 2003
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2003 Guardian Newspapers Limited